Patna: Former Bihar health minister Tej Pratap Yadav has finally vacated his government-owned bungalow, calling it “haunted” and accusing his political rivals of “letting out ghosts” there.
Yadav, who is the older son of incarcerated Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) president Lalu Prasad Yadav, was allotted the bungalow soon after he became a minister in the erstwhile Grand Alliance government, in which his party was a coalition partner.
However, soon after he moved in a series of misfortunes befell him. The trouble he incurred included the flak from the soil scam, which lead to confiscation of land upon which his family was constructing Bihar’s biggest mall; registration of cases against members of his family in the land-for-railway hotel scam; the Supreme Court ordering a speedy trial in the fodder scam cases, in which his father is an accused; and eventually, the fall of the Grand Alliance government after chief minister Nitish Kumar switched sides and formed a new government with the opposition, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP).
As his troubles grew, Yadav tried to circumvent more misfortune by changing things around the house; he shut the bungalow's south-facing gate after consulting vastu shastra (the Indian science of architecture) and began to use the rear gate to enter the compound.
That was followed by a ritual, called 'dushman maaran jaap' (chant of hymns to eliminate enemies), in June 2017 while his family members were being monitored by central agencies for corruption charges, media reports said.
As all these rituals failed to “bring peace in his life”, Yadav eventually vacated the bungalow this week, labeling it a “Haunted house”.
“I vacated the bungalow because Nitish Kumar and his deputy Sushil Kumar Modi had released ghosts in it. The ghosts were haunting me," Yadav told the media.
However, the ruling National Democratic Alliance rubbished his claim, terming it sheer nonsense. “Tej Pratap Yadav suffers from acute attention deficiency and is trying to hog media limelight,” said an NDA leader.
