Nitish Kumar Was Under Huge Pressure From Lalu Yadav: Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy

Union minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy on Saturday claimed that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar was under pressure from RJD chief Lalu Prasad during the grand alliance rule in Bihar and described his step to walk out of the coalition as a "big step" towards clean politics. Mr Rudy, the Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, also expressed confidence that under the new JD(U)-BJP government, Bihar would be transformed.

"Bihar's population is 11 crore and Nitish Kumar has forged the partnership with the BJP in the interest of these people and the state. This alliance should have taken place much earlier. With this decision, Bihar is heading towards big transformation," he said.

"I feel Nitish Kumar was under huge pressure of Lalu Prasad Yadav during the alliance, but now he is relieved and I think this decision is a big step in the direction of clean politics," he added.

Mr Rudy was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the launch of a skill development programme initiated by CREDAI Pune Metro.

When asked about the allegations levelled by Lalu Prasad that the new alliance was "fixed", the parliamentarian from Bihar slammed the RJD chief over his alleged involvement in various scams.

"He was found guilty in fodder scam and cannot contest elections... Now things are coming out that when he was the railway minister, he sold hotels and created shell companies in the name of his family members and now looking at the trail of all these scams, the amount of scam may go up to Rs. 10,000 crore," claimed the minister.During his speech, Mr Rudy said the mindset of people in India had always been to make their children engineers or provide good education to them so that they could get better jobs.

"Post-Independence, even at the government level, we have never focused on skill development. There are 18 lakh seats in engineering colleges across India, out of which eight lakh seats are empty. If we focus more on skill development, we can really become the leading country in providing the skilled workforce to the world," he said.

Mr Rudy further said that the Narendra Modi government was the first in India to have created a separate ministry for skill development.

"On behalf of the government, I urge CREDAI to make skill development their mission since the construction industry is one of the largest employment generators and construction workers are the real assets to their business. CREDAI can train them across India. It has the potential to turn this dream of skilled India into reality," he said.

Stating that construction-related deaths were a serious problem, Mr Rudy said something must be done about this.