By IANS,
New Delhi: Urban Development Minister S. Jaipal Reddy and Lalu Prasad had a hearty laugh when Reddy, while speaking during a discussion on a bill, referred to the Bihar leader as his “sexy friend”.
Responding to a suggestion by Lalu Prasad on the Delhi Metro Bill, Reddy said: “Mr Lalu Prasad is a friend of mine for several decades.”
As Lalu qualified the remark by saying he was a “good friend”, the minister grinned: “He is my sexy friend.” To this, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader responded promptly, “Please keep it restricted to ‘good friend’, I am not your sexy friend.”
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Divided they fall, but united they stand
Politicians indeed make for colourful people. The Lok Sabha Thursday witnessed an unusual bonhomie between political opponents – Sushma Swaraj (Bharatiya Janata Party), Mulayam Singh Yadav (Samajwadi Party), Lalu Prasad (RJD) and Basudeb Acharia (Communist Party of India-Marxist).
They were seen having an animated discussion, and Swaraj left her seat and sat with Mulayam Singh. She later chatted standing with Acharia before exchanging a few words with Lalu Prasad.
But for Lalu Prasad, all of them stood up the moment Speaker Meira Kumar took up the passage of the Delhi Metro Bill, and also together demanded that they wanted first to discuss the issue of rising prices of essential commodities.
And all were ready to let the Metro Bill be passed without discussion.
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Wit of the grassroots man
When Lalu Prasad speaks, he invariably has the whole house in peals of laughter with his witticism. When the deputy speaker asked him to sit down after he had spoken long on the issue of price rise, the inimitable Bihar leader shot back: “Will my sitting down stop the rising prices?”
And taking potshots at the only two ministers sitting on the treasury benches at the time, Lalu Prasad, speaking in his famous Bihari accent, said: “Just like bats hanging from the ceiling, the two think they are holding up the sky… and assume that they are running the government.”
He was referring to the absence of all ministers other than Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and his Minister of State V. Narayansamy in the Lok Sabha during discussion on price rise.
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Ideological opponents, but neighbours here
The new seating arrangement in the front row of the Lok Sabha has pitted together strange bedfellows.
Mulayam Singh Yadav sits with bitter rival Bahujan Samaj Party’s Dara Singh Chauhan, Communist Party of India-Marxist’s Basudeb Acharia with ideological opponent National Democratic Alliance convenor Sharad Yadav, and Lalu Prasad’s neighbour is H.D. Deve Gowda of Janata Dal-Secular, who was planning a Third Front against the United Progressive Alliance when Lalu Prasad was still part of it.