JD(U) slams Centre for applying ‘different yardsticks for Opposition leaders’

PATNA: A day after Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Kanhaiya Prasad, son of JD(U) MLC Radha Charan Seth who already was arrested last week, chief minister Nitish Kumar’s party on Tuesday accused the Narendra Modi government at the centre for “acting with bias” and asked why different yardsticks were being applied with different leaders.
Informed sources said Kanhaiya was called at its Patna office by the ED on Monday for interrogation in a sand mining case but was finally arrested since he failed to give satisfactory reply over several issues. Earlier on September 13, his father and lawmaker Seth was arrested by the ED in a money laundering case, and he is currently under judicial custody, but their arrests have hugely irked the JD(U) which is currently part of the ruling Grand Alliance in the state.
“The BJP talks routinely about ‘one-country-one-law’ but it has gone on applying different yardsticks for different leaders and states, and the current developments have now firmly established this,” JD(U)’s state chief spokesperson Neeraj Kumar alleged on Tuesday.
“While on the one hand the BJP inducted as minister in Maharashtra government a leader who was sent to jail in a corruption case, on the other hand, it has been constantly targeting the opposition leaders in BIhar since the Grand Alliance came to power in August last year,” Kumar said, charging the Centre with misusing the central agencies to harass the opposition.
In October last year, the IT sleuths had conducted searches at more than two dozen premises linked to Patna-based builder Gabbu Singh, considered close to JD(U) national president Rajiv Ranjan alias Lalan Singh during which the raiding team reportedly seized Rs1.75 crores in cash and detected tax evasions.