PATNA: Two days after he took oath as the Deputy chief minister of Bihar for the second time, Tejashwi Yadav on Friday said that the return of Mahagathbandhan has made people talk about employment.
In New Delhi to meet Congress interim chief Sonia Gandhi, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader also said that people talking about employment is a big achievement.
Yadav arrived in the National capital on Thursday night. On Friday afternoon, he first met CPI leader D Raja and CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury. Following that, Yadav met the Congress leader.
The meeting between Yadav and Sonia Gandhi lasted for 30 minutes at the residence of the Congress chief. While he did not share in exact words, the sources told The New Indian that the two leaders also spoke about cabinet sharing in the state.
Earlier in the day, the Congress in-charge of Bihar, Bhakta Charan Das, said that the grand old party deserves a respectable share in the state. The Congress has 19 MLAs in the state.
Speaking about his promise of providing 10 lakh jobs to youths, Yadav said, “It is an achievement for us that we forced people to debate on employment instead of Hindu-Muslim.”
“We will be giving employment to youths but also ask the BJP about the promise of providing employment to 2 crore youths every year. The BJP, despite being in an alliance government in Bihar, was unable to give jobs to 19 people, instead of providing 19 lakh jobs,” he said.
Taking a dig at the BJP over Nitish Kumar quitting the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Yadav said, “By quitting the NDA, Nitish Kumar has given a tight slap to the BJP. Except for the BJP, all parties in the Bihar Assembly have joined the Grand Alliance.”
Congress and the RJD share a very old relationship. Both Sonia Gandhi and her son and former party president Rahul Gandhi are considered close to RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav, who was also a minister in the Congress-led UPA government.
In the 2015 assembly polls, the Congress, RJD and Janata Dal (United) contested as part of the mahagathbandhan for the first time and won the elections. However, two years later JD(U) snapped ties with the Grand Alliance and joined the BJP after five years gap. Now, in 2022, the JD-U again quit the NDA after five years and joined the mahagathbandhan in the state.