India News | Nitish Inaugurates Bridge over Ganges, Linking Patna with Tejashwi Yadav's Turf

Patna, June 23 (PTI) Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday inaugurated a six-lane bridge over the Ganges, connecting state capital Patna with Raghopur, a pocket borough of his arch rival, RJD president Lalu Prasad.

Kumar inaugurated the 4.57 km-long bridge by cutting a ribbon near Kachchi Dargah, a mosque situated in the eastern fringes of the city.

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Several ministers, including Deputy CMs Samrat Choudhary and Vijay Kumar Sinha, besides Assembly Speaker Nawal Kishor Yadav, who represents Patna Sahib constituency under which Kachchi Dargah falls, and senior officials were present on the occasion.

After the ceremony, the CM, who will seek a fifth consecutive term in office in the upcoming polls, drove down to Raghopur, which is the assembly constituency of the leader of the opposition Tejashwi Yadav.

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In Raghopur, which falls in Vaishali district, Kumar was greeted by locals with whom the longest-serving CM shared his happiness upon completion of the project.

"People of Raghopur diyara (riverine area), who were earlier dependent on boats ferrying across the Ganga to come to Patna, will be immensely benefited", Kumar said.

Incidentally, Yadav, son and heir apparent of the RJD supremo and a former deputy of Kumar, was conspicuous by his absence.

Party sources said he was caught up at the RJD office, where Prasad filed nomination papers for re-election as the national president.

Yadav, his mother Rabri Devi and Prasad have represented Raghopur several times. So far, they have maintained a studied silence over the development for which the ruling JD(U)-BJP combine is likely to claim credit during the elections.

However, the Congress, which is the RJD's junior ally in Bihar, sought to underscore that the project was "cleared by the Mahagathbandhan government way back in 2015" when the two parties were sharing power with the chief minister's JD(U).

Addressing a press conference, Congress legislature party leader Shakeel Ahmed Khan also alleged "corruption" under the NDA, blaming it for "60 per cent cost escalation, from the initially sanctioned Rs 3,115 crore to Rs 4,988 crore".

Khan also claimed that in the past three years, there have been "at least 27 incidents of bridge collapse across the state", of which 12 took place last year "within a span of just 17 days".

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)