PATNA: Almost three years after he was voted out of power in Bihar, RJD chief and railway minister Lalu Prasad on Thursday admitted the imposition of President’s rule by dissolving the newly-elected Bihar assembly in February 2005 was a mistake.

“It angered people and caused erosion in our vote bank,” Lalu said at a function organized by Bihar State Cooperative Marketing Union (BISCOMAUN) chairman Sunil Singh.

Supporters of Singh, who is known to be close to the railway minister, are protesting against the amendments made by the NDA’s Nitish Kumar government to cooperative laws. They allege it was aimed at taking over the premier cooperative body of the state.

Reacting to Nitish’s statement describing him as a `fused bulb’, Lalu said he is a vapour lamp and Nitish a bulb without a filament. “Nitish keeps on saying that `I will bowl out Lalu for a duck’. But I will hit such a six that he (Nitish) will be out of the field of Bihar politics,” he said.

Lalu denied Nitish’s charge that he interfered with the functioning of cooperative bodies and installed his men as their heads. “During RJD’s 15 years of rule, I never wanted to install my men in these bodies. But this man (Nitish) is out to throw you out. His mentality is like that of Raj Thackeray,” Lalu said vowing to “tear apart” all the black laws framed during the Nitish regime on returning to power in Bihar.

He accused Nitish of making the cooperative bodies defunct. “Ram Vilas Paswanji is providing fertilizer and my trains are ensuring its supply but the fertilizers are being blackmarketed. Nitish’s agriculture minister is distributing seeds in the Sonepur fair,” Lalu said insisting this work should have been given to BISCOMAUN.

Lalu said he did not hurt any section of the society, including upper castes, during his regime. “But I have been saying this for long that Nitish has teeth in his stomach. The man is very vindictive.”

Lalu said he as the railway minister has given projects worth Rs 65,000 crore to Bihar, including five major industries. “Nitish stopped giving land for the projects so I had to change the law in Delhi,” he said. He said the Nitish government stopped +2 education in colleges and without creating adequate infrastructure diverted +2 education to high schools. He also ridiculed the ongoing process of appointment of teachers.

“Today Nitish is inaugurating old private engineering colleges. But until good teachers are brought in, our students will continue to go to Pune and other places for higher education,” Lalu said. He also expressed concern over spread of Naxalism in Bihar and claimed he had brought Naxalites to the mainstream during his regime. He said the UPA government at the Centre has done extremely well and India was able to maintain its development at a time when even the US is reeling under severe economic crisis.