‘Rs 14,000 Crore World Bank loan used in Bihar polls’: Prashant Kishor's Party alleges
text_fields
Patna: As dust settles over the polls results in Bihar, Nitish Kumar administration is facing allegation of having ‘diverted’ a Rs 14,000-crore World Bank fund for the 2025 assembly elections, NDTV reported.
Former poll strategist Prashant Kishor's Jan Suraaj Party national president Uday Singh said that the public funds were ‘diverted for doles and freebies’.
He claimed that the Nitish Kumar government splurged Rs 40,000 crore ‘Since June, till polls were announced’ to ‘purchase’ votes.
A day after the Jan Suraaj Party failed to win even a seat, he said: ‘The scale was unprecedented. Even Rs 14,000 crore of the loan they received from the World Bank has been diverted for doles and freebies’.
Pointing to the 'Mukhyamantri Mahila Rojgar Yojana' that handed Rs 10,000 each to the bank accounts of women in the state ahead of the polls, he said that despite model code of conduct, people kept getting money till a day before the poll, adding ‘This was enough to sway women who may have been hand-to-mouth’.
Jan Suraaj Party leader said that NDA government would not have returned to the power if it had not been for the money that they had ‘splurged to buy out votes’.
‘Please remember that it was not until the Jan Suraaj Party promised Rs 2,000 old age pension that the government raised the amount from Rs 700 to Rs 1,100 per month,’ Singh reportedly said.
He pointed out that a section of his party workers sided with the ruling NDA fearing that return of Rashtriya Janata Dal to power would lead to ‘jungle raj’.
‘I can say there was fear of the return of jungle raj under the RJD. Although I am not saying that there has been any jungle raj, the fear was there. Many people, who would have given us a chance, ended up voting for the NDA out of that fear,’ he said.
The BJP-led NDA bagged staggering 202 seats in the 243 assembly with BJP winning 89 seats while its ally JDU gained 85, whereas the RJD-led Opposition bloc, Mahagathbandhan could only manage 35 seats.