Sushil Modi asks Nitish Kumar to break silence on Bihar soil scam

Patna: Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi on Thursday urged Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to break his silence on the soil purchase scam involving family members of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav.

"The Chief Minister should break his silence (on soil purchase scam)," Sushil Modi said today.

Sushil Modi also accused the state government officials of trying to suppress the alleged scam on Prasad's direction and warned that such officials will be penalised and lose their jobs like it happened in the fodder scam.

"Half a dozen officials had lost their jobs in multi-crore fodder scam for colluding with the RJD supremo," he said.

The BJP leader alleged that earth filling work at Patna Zoo was carried out without a plan or approval and asked the state government to explain why the work was done at all.

He said that the soil was purchased from an under-construction mall registered in the name of a company whose board of directors include several members of Lalu Prasad's family. The names include those of his minister sons - Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejaswi Prasad Yadav.

"Five lakh cubic feet of soil was transported to Patna Zoo from the mall premises by trucks which made 1000 round trips over three months," he claimed.

The BJP leader also charged the Patna Zoo authorities for making a payment of Rs 90 lakh for soil from the corpus of Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund by flouting guidelines under which the interest amount of the corpus of Rs 334.41 crore can be spent only wildlife conservation.

Sushil Modi said the Bihar Chief Secretary heads the Bihar Wildlife Conservation Fund and asked him to explain how the funds were used for soil purchase and whether any prior approval was taken in this regard.