A war of words broke out between Union Minister Giriraj Singh and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav on Friday over the RJD leader's poll promise of 10 lakh jobs made earlier.
Tejashwi called out the Union Minister for sharing an edited video of an interview to suggest that the young RJD leader was going back on his promise to create 10 lakh jobs in Bihar, the Twitter spat leading the new deputy chief minister to iterate that the new mahagathbandhan government would deliver on its promise, reports PTI.
Singh, a firebrand BJP leader who has been tweeting furiously ever since the upheaval in his home state left his party stripped of power, had shared a video clip in which Tejashwi can be heard saying, "I had made the promise of providing 10 lakh jobs upon becoming the CM. Currently I am the deputy CM."
Tejashwi, who is also prolific on the micro-blogging site, replied by posting a longer clip of the same interview with some biting remarks aimed at the Begusarai MP. In the clip, the words spoken by Tejashwi quoted in Singh's tweet are followed by, " but I have discussed the matter with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who has taken it very seriously. We will deliver on the promise of job creation. Let us first win the trust vote".
Tejashwi also added that "you do not become a jnani merely by wearing a one-foot-long ponytail. BJP has suffered on account of your chirkut (petty) acts and sadak chhap (cheap) public statements." To this, the Union minister said, "Top leaders of the secular government of Bihar have started attacking symbols of Hindu religion."The "son of a fodder thief" cannot become a saint, the Union minister said, referring to the fodder scam cases in which Tejashwi's father and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad has been convicted.
Tejashwi is currently in Delhi to be with his parents and celebrate Rakshabandhan with his sisters. He has shared pictures of his visit on his Twitter handle. The deputy chief minister is likely to be back soon for the cabinet expansion expected immediately after Independence Day, which would be followed, later this month, by a special session of the Assembly when the new government will have to prove its majority on the floor of the House.
The RJD heir apparent is also expected to bring along a list, formally approved by his father and party chief Lalu Prasad, of the names of leaders who will be inducted into the cabinet.
On Thursday, the young RJD leader, who joined hands with his former boss Nitish Kumar after his exit from the BJP-led coalition to form a new government of the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar, reaffirmed his commitment to deliver on the promise of providing 10 lakh jobs that had fetched his party lots of votes in the last assembly polls but not enough to muster a majority.
In an interview to a television news channel, Tejashwi said Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, with whom he took oath the day before, had issued instructions to officials to accord top priority to job creation. "There are so many vacant posts in government departments. We will begin by filling these up, "he said.
"It isn't merely a promise but an acknowledgement of the crying need for employment generation in Bihar. We cannot think of going back on it since people had showered their blessings in the elections in which the RJD-led alliance polled only about 12,000 votes less, across all 243 assembly seats, than the NDA," he recalled.
