Patna, Feb 1 (PTI) RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav on Saturday charged the NDA government at the Centre with indulging in "rhetoric" in the Union Budget, and presenting announcements made in the past with "repackaging".

The former Bihar deputy CM, who addressed a press conference in Vaishali district, also slammed Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, whose JD(U) is a crucial ally of the BJP, for his inability to secure a fair deal for the state.

"Just look at TDP supremo Chandra Babu Naidu, who has secured benefits to the tune of Rs 1 lakh crore for Andhra Pradesh. The Budget presented today is silent on any such help for Bihar. We also do not know where the Rs 59,000 crore promised last year has been spent," said Yadav, who is now the leader of the opposition.

Training his guns at Kumar, who dumped RJD last year to realign with BJP, Yadav said, "We could not expect the CM to secure a better deal, since he no longer seems to be in his senses and has lost the ability to discern where not to clap his hands." The allusion was to an incident of January 30, when at the government function organised on the death anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, Kumar, who is in his 70s, had started clapping.

The inadvertence has provided fresh ammunition to detractors of the JD(U) supremo who have been claiming that the longest-serving CM had grown mentally unstable and was, therefore, unfit for the top job.

Yadav alleged, "The CM seems to have already abandoned the demand for special status, on which Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman did not speak a word while presenting the budget. There is not even a special economic package for the poor state which is being cheated by Modi government as all good things are being done for the prime minister's home state Gujarat." When his response was sought on announcements in the budget for Bihar, like setting up of greenfield airports, the young leader dismissed these as "rhetoric (jumlebaazi)" and asked, "Where is the budgetary allocation?".

"These are all old things with some repackaging. Why is the Centre silent on projects like a new airport at Bihta, on the outskirts of Patna? When we were in power, we had acquired land for the purpose and handed it over to the Airports Authority of India," said the RJD leader.

Yadav, whose father Lalu Prasad, the RJD president, is a former railway minister, also said that "the Modi government has done away with a separate Rail budget, which the people used to wait for as announcements used to be made on passenger fares in trains. The budget is silent on that". PTI NAC SOM

Budget rhetoric masks repackaged announcements, leaving state allocations and promised projects without clear funding commitments. An opposition leader characterised the national Budget as rhetorical and repackaged past promises, asserting it lacks fresh allocations or a special economic package for Bihar, questions the use of previously promised funds, and criticises the omission of explicit support for projects like the Bihta airport; he also blames the state chief minister's political realignment for failing to secure substantive fiscal commitments and notes the removal of a separate rail budget reduces focused announcements on passenger fares.