Lalu trying to take us back to 'lantern, 'lathi' days: Nitish Kumar

DEOBARIA: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today took potshots at RJD president Lalu Prasad saying while he was working hard to enhance power supply and facilitate education, the opposition leader was trying to take them back to days of 'lantern' (RJD symbol) and 'lathi'.

"From a time when Bihar had a little of 700 MW power supply, today the availability of electricity was increased to 2400 MW," Kumar said addressing an election rally in favour of Vijay Kumar Sahni at Vaishali Lok Sabha seat against Raghubansh Prasad Singh.

The target was to increase power supply to 3000 MW by end of this year and make it 4000 MW in 2015, he said to highlight the initiative of his government in power sector. Kumar also highlighted construction of more than 14,000 small and big road bridges in the state, cycle yojna to boost education among girls and reservation of 50 per cent to women in panchayat and urban local bodies.

He blamed Lalu Prasad for "wasting" the opportunity to work for welfare of poor and downtroddens. "RJD ruled Bihar in the name of social justice but what prevented it to work for welfare of dalits, extremely backward castes and other downtrodden section?" he posed the question to the RJD chief. The environment in Bihar has been transformed from bad to good through great difficulties, he said and appealed to people not to let it slide back to days of "lantern" and "lathi".