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Patna,(BiharTimes): Former Excise Minister in the Nitish Kumar government, Jamshed Ashraf, former Congress MLA from Patna Central, Aquil Haider and ex-state president of the Janata Dal (Secular) Shravan Kumar Choudhry on Sunday joined the Congress party. Aquil Haider is also a former head of the state unit of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and brother-in-law of senior NCP leader, Tariq Anwar.

They joined the party at a Milan Samaroh at the Bharatiya Nritya Kala Mandir, which was attended by the Union minister of Minority Affairs, Salman Khurshid, Bihar incharge of the AICC, Mukul Wasnik and state BPCC president, Chaudhary Mehboob Ali Kaiser.

Jamshed Ashraf, who was dismissed by Nitish Kumar on February 18 last blasted the chief minister for introducing a new culture of corruption. The fraudulent withdrawals of Rs 11,412 crore from state treasuries against MNREGA and other Central government schemes only vindicated his stand of rampant corruption in the state administration.

Jamshed was sacked when he wrote a letter to the chief minister urging him to probe over Rs 500 crore scam in the Excise Department.
Wasnik, while welcoming Jamshed Ashraf, Haider and Choudhry to the party, said that they had joined the Congress not to enjoy the benefits of power but to make contributions to the party to make Bihar a developed state.

Countering Nitish’s allegations that the Centre was meting out step-motherly treatment to the state, he said Nitish should tell the people of Bihar that while the NDA government at the Centre had made available Rs 3,000 crore for rural development, the UPA government had provided Rs 19,000 crore on this count.

Elaborating his points further he said that the state government failed to utilise the funds for providing dwellings to 10.98 lakh people living below the poverty line in the state. In the same way, the Centre had provided funds for giving pensions to 1.84 lakh physically challenged persons in the state, but the Nitish government succeeded in providing pension to just 4,000 beneficiaries.

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