The Enforcement Directorate questioned Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and
former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav for around nine hours in Patna
on Tuesday in connection with the alleged land-for-jobs scam in the railways, prompting the party to hold protests alleging harassment of the Opposition across the country.

Tejashwi reached the central agency’s office in Patna around 11am to face questioning by an ED team that had arrived from Delhi. He came out of the ED office at 8pm, flashed the victory sign and left. ED sources said that he was confronted with 60
questions pertaining to the case.

ED officials had on Monday interrogated Tejashwi’s father and RJD chief Lalu Prasad for nearly 10 hours. The turn of events indicates an acceleration in the land-for-jobs case following the change of regime in Bihar.

A large number of RJD leaders and supporters protested outside the agency’s office in Patna, alleging that Lalu and his family were being harassed by the Centre in a bid to cow down the Opposition.

A crowd of party supporters had already assembled outside the agency’s office, disrupting traffic, when Tejashwi reached there. He appealed to them to be patient and maintain peace.

Several RJD leaders, including Rajya Sabha member Manoj Jha, MLC Sunil Kumar Singh, MLAs, party office-bearers and supporters staged a sit-in opposite the ED office and waited for the questioning to get over.

Lalu’s eldest daughter and Rajya Sabha member Misa Bharti and elder son Tej Pratap Yadav, who is an MLA, joined the sit-in in the afternoon.

“It was lunchtime and I sought permission from the guards at the gates of the ED office to send food for Tejashwi, but there was no reply from the officials. So I was sitting here. My father was continuously made to sit on a chair for 10 hours yesterday.... He is aged and ill,” Misa said.

She also attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP. “The Prime Minister is very afraid about the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Efforts are being made to strike fear in the entire Opposition across the country. But we are not going to be scared. The public is seeing everything and the BJP, especially the Prime Minister, will have to face the music.”

Talking about the regime change in Bihar, she asserted that it was being tried in Jharkhand too, and the BJP was “putting pressure on chief minister Hemant Soren to team up with it”.

Jha said: “This is the office of the BJP, not the ED. Now there is no ED, IT (income tax) or CBI in the country. They are now the extended offices of the BJP.”

Jha claimed the central agencies sent summonses only at those places where the BJP is on the back foot and vowed to “fight from the Assembly and Parliament to the streets” against the harassment of the Opposition.

The land-for-jobs scam allegedly occurred between 2004 and 2009 during the tenure of Lalu as Union railway minister. The CBI registered an FIR on May 18, 2022, while the ED entered the case later on. Since then the two central agencies have conducted several raids on Lalu, his family and associates and interrogated them on a few occasions.