In a letter to the Bihar State Election Commission (SEC) dated 10 September, the commission has been asked to take immediate action against Tejashwi Yadav, the Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, for allegedly distributing money to women of a village in Gopalganj district.
The complaint was made by Member of the Legislative Council Neeraj Kumar, who belongs to the ruling Janata Dal (United) party.
"Tejashwi Yadav was caught on camera distributing Rs 500 currency notes to women in Garauli village (under Basghat Masurai panchayat in Baikuthpur block of Gopalganj). The village comes under Panchayati Raj area and a model code of conduct is imposed in the state for Panchayat election 2021," said Kumar said in the letter.
"Tejashwi Yadav is sitting on a key constitutional post in Bihar. The act of Tejaswi Yadav is violation of model code of conduct. Hence, the election commission should take action against him."MLC Neeraj Kumar
Neeraj Kumar claimed that the video was taken from the official Facebook account of Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), where it was uploaded with the title 'Tejashwi Yadav has taken the blessing of women of the paternal village of RJD MLA Prem Shanker on the day of Teej festival' on Thursday, 9 September.
"Who is that prince dropping money in the lap of poor villagers? As poor villagers do not know him, someone says that he is a son of Lalu Prasad. The person sitting on the front seat of the SUV also introduces himself as he is Tejashwi Yadav, son of Lalu Prasad."Neeraj Kumar
The BJP's Bihar unit also reacted sharply to the video.
Chief spokesperson and OBC wing national General Secretary Nikhil Anand also argued that Yadav's actions violated the model of code of conduct in the context of the Panchayat elections in the state, scheduled to begin on 24 September:
"The RJD is a party of one family which sells tickets during elections. It has no organisational structure on the ground that helps to earn votes. Hence, he (Tejashwi) is distributing money to shift momentum of Panchayat election in favour of RJD or RJD supported candidates. BJP requested the Election Commission to take strongest action against Tejashwi Yadav who is sitting on a constitutional post in Bihar and still violating the model code of conduct in broad daylight."
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