Lalu’s elder son Tej Pratap files nomination from Hasanpur seat

Patna,  Tej Pratap Yadav, Bihar’s former health minister and the elder son of Lalu Prasad, on Tuesday filed his nomination from the Hasanpur assembly seat in Samastipur district.

Tej Pratap was accompanied by his younger brother and the Rashtriya Janata Dal’s CM nominee Tejashwi Yadav and senior party leaders Jagadanad Singh and Abdul Bari Siddiqui to the office of sub-divisional magistrate-cum-returning officer.

Looking confident during the filing of nomination Tej Pratap had earlier gone to the helipad to receive Tejashwi.

Before leaving from Patna, Tejashwi had attacked CM Nitish Kumar for his remarks about cabinet meetings not taking place during the RJD regime.

During a virtual rally on Monday evening, the CM had wondered how Tejashwi could promise 10 lakh jobs in his first cabinet meeting since no such cabinet meetings took place in the RJD regime. “Did cabinet meetings take place properly during their time?” asked Nitish.

“Whenever, I talk about development and jobs, he takes it in a negative way. Instead of doing this, he should talk in a constructive manner. Unfortunately, he is running out of points to make about his own regime for the last 15 years,” said Tejashwi Yadav.

“When I was deputy CM of Bihar for 15 months, our ministry had expended all the grants for various projects. He is the CM and has all the data. Why doesn’t he reveal the data of my tenure in the public domain? There was not a single charge on me or any other RJD leader,” added Tejashwi.

Jagadanad Singh also reacted sharply to Nitish’s comments. “He should be ashamed of his remark. We regularly had cabinet meetings during our tenure and discussed all the points for hours and hours.”

Tej Pratap was earlier elected from the Mahua seat. He was in search of a safe seat since there was a speculation that his former wife Aishwarya Rai may challenge him on a JD-U ticket.

The contest at Hasanpur assembly segment is likely to be interesting since Tej Pratap is pitted against Janata Dal (United) sitting MLA Raj Kumar Ray.

Ray had won the seat in the 2015 election by a margin of 29,600 votes by defeating his nearest rival Binod Choudhary of the BLSP.