Sushil Modi fires fresh corruption salvo at Tejashwi

Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi today fired a fresh corruption salvo at RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav alleging him of serving as the "handling and storage agent" of a leading steel company in the country.

Addressing a press conference here, Sushil also alleged that Yadav did not declare this information in his affidavit before the Election Commission when he made his electoral debut in the Bihar assembly polls of 2015 and accused him of evading taxes on the earnings made in aforementioned capacity.

Rankled by the fresh attack, the RJD heir apparent came out with a number of tweets calling the Deputy Chief Minister "a master of rumours" and challenged him to get all the allegations investigated.

"Tejashwi Yadav has been doing business worth millions as the handling and storage agent of Jindal Steel and Power Limited. He was appointed as the company's handling and storage agent at Patna on September 28, 2012", the senior BJP leader - who holds the finance portfolio - said while distributing copies of the Stockyard Agreement purportedly with signatures of the RJD heir apparent.

"The question is, why did he conceal this information so far. Why did he not disclose the property he has acquired for the purpose and the income that he may have earned through this business in his declaration of assets before the Election Commission", the Deputy CM said.

"In his VAT returns, Tejashwi Yadav has always been showing his turn-over as zero. He should explain how is it possible when his earnings by the enterprise itself were likely to have fetched him crores", Sushil, who has come up with many allegations of financial wrongdoings against the family, often with documents to buttress his claim, said.

"We will write to the Election Commission as well as the Income Tax department, drawing their attention towards the irregularities", he added.

Yadav reacted to the allegations with the tweet "you are the king of falsehood. You have been alleging that we were getting a mall constructed at the cost of Rs 750 crore. Now even Enforcement Directorate and the IT Department are putting the value of the said mall at no more than Rs 45 crore. Why do you not get investigations ordered instead of distracting people with bare allegations".

In a couple of subsequent tweets, the 28-year-old RJD leader made oblique references to alleged involvement of close relatives of the Deputy CM in the multi-crore Srijan scam and called him an "incompetent spokesman for Chief Minister Nitish Kumar" and added "you would be able to cause no harm to Tejashwi, who may be young but has integrity".