BJP tears into Opposition's V-P pick over meet with RJD chief Lalu Yadav

New Delhi, Sep 8 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday launched an all-out attack on the Opposition's Vice-Presidential candidate Justice B. Sudershan Reddy over his meeting with Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, a convict in the multi-crore fodder scam.

Addressing a press conference, BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad called out the former Supreme Court judge’s appeals for upholding conscience and maintaining probity in public life and asked how his hobnobbing with a convicted leader does justice to the poll race, for second second-highest Constitutional office that he is fighting for.

“Lalu Yadav has been convicted in a series of scams, including Railway jobs for scam and the wrongful sale of Railway properties. Apart from convictions, there are multiple charge sheets against him, awaiting trial. By meeting him, what message does Mr Reddy want to send?” Ravi Shankar Prasad asked.

Terming their meeting as ‘hypocrisy in extreme’, he asked the Opposition’s V-P nominee not to boast about conscience and claimed that it’s he who is shredding the high morality and probity into pieces.

“Justice Reddy’s meeting with the fodder scam convict is worthy of condemnation, and we condemn it in the strongest terms,” the BJP leader added.

He also lashed out at the retired judges who came out publicly in his support on the controversy regarding the ‘Salwa Judum’ judgment sometime ago and questioned their silence over the latest episode of the former SC judge running for V-P office, and a convicted political figure sharing space.

Earlier in the day, BJP IT cell Amit Malviya also took potshots at Justice Reddy’s meeting with RJD chief Lalu Yadav and called it an ‘utter hypocrisy’.

Sharing the pictures on X, he said that B Sudarshan Reddy recently met fodder scam convict Lalu Prasad, who isn’t even a Member of Parliament and has no vote in the VP electoral college.

“This isn’t just terrible optics, it’s a shocking statement on probity in public life by someone aspiring for a high constitutional office,” Malviya said.

“What’s even more telling is the silence of the 'usual suspects' — retired judges and self-proclaimed custodians of constitutional morality. Their hypocrisy stands exposed,” he added.

The Vice-Presidential election is set to take place on Tuesday, with the odds tilted towards the BJP’s V-P candidate CP Radhakrishnan.

--IANS

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