NEW DELHI: In an explosive press conference just days before the Election Commission is expected to announce the Bihar assembly poll schedule, Jan Suraj leader Prashant Kishor levelled a fresh set of serious corruption allegations against senior BJP and NDA leaders. .
Speaking at his party’s Patliputra camp office, Kishor targeted Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Samrat Choudhary, JDU minister Ashok Choudhary, and the Manav Vaibhav Vikas Trust, linking them to cases ranging from mass killings and rape to multi-crore property deals and systemic kickbacks.
On Ashok Choudhary, Kishor accused the minister of amassing vast illegal wealth through rigged contract allocations. He alleged that in just the past eight months, contracts worth over Rs 20,000 crore were issued by Choudhary’s department, with a 5% commission extracted at the allotment stage and an additional cut when funds were released. He claimed this money was routed through engineers, pointing to the recent recovery of cash from an engineer’s residence. Kishor warned that in upcoming briefings, contractors who allegedly paid these commissions will be brought forward.
Kishor also challenged Ashok Choudhary’s defamation notice that he has filed against the Jan Suraj founder seeking Rs 100 crore in damages, giving him a seven-day ultimatum to withdraw it and apologise.
Failing that, he said, Jan Suraj would release documents detailing illegal properties worth Rs 500 crore, and pursue the matter through the Governor and the courts.
Monday’s allegations are the latest in a series of corruption charges Kishor has been levelling against BJP and NDA leaders in Bihar over recent weeks as the state heads into elections. For a coalition that has largely avoided serious graft charges for twenty years, it has come at a time when it is battling years of anti-incumbency associated with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
Turning to Samrat Choudhary, Kishor demanded his immediate dismissal and arrest. He alleged that Choudhary was an accused in the 1995 Tarapur massacre, involving the killing of seven members of his own community, and that he secured release at the time by producing a forged age certificate to claim he was a minor. Kishor pointed to discrepancies between that claim and Choudhary’s later election affidavit, which lists an age that would have made him 26 at the time of the killings. He also referred to Choudhary’s name appearing in the infamous Shilpi-Gautam rape and murder case, which was investigated by the CBI.
Kishor further questioned the financial dealings of the Manav Vaibhav Vikas Trust, asking its trustees — including relatives of chief secretary Pratya Amrit — to explain how the trust purchased properties worth over Rs 100 crore shortly after the engagement of Ashok Choudhary’s daughter. He demanded that their bank accounts and transactions be made public.
Addressing questions about Jan Suraj’s own funding, Kishor released detailed figures of his own earnings, saying he made Rs 241 crore through business consulting over the last three years, paid all due taxes, and donated nearly Rs 99 crore of his personal income to the organisation.
