- Maithili Thakur compared Lalu Prasad Yadav to blind king Dhritarashtra
- She also likened Tejashwi Yadav to Duryodhana, referencing Mahabharata characters
- 'The king was experienced but blind. He wasn't worried about Hastinapur, but about Duryodhana,' she said
Singer-politician Maithili Thakur on Thursday attacked former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and compared his rule to that of 'Dhritarashtra', a blind king in the epic Mahabharata.
In a fiery speech inside the Bihar assembly, the 25-year-old newly elected BJP MLA, who is one of the youngest in the country, also compared Yadav's son and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav to 'Duryodhana', a Kaurava who was one of Dhritarashtra's 100 sons.
"Whenever I think about that time (before 2005), I remember Dhritarashtra's Hastinapur in the Mahabharata. The king was experienced, but he was blind and didn't want to see. He wasn't worried about Hastinapur, but about his Duryodhana," she said, in an apparent reference to Lalu and Tejashwi.
She said the state was deprived of education about two decades ago.
"Many generations are still suffering from it," she said.
Without naming Tejashwi, she said that those at the top of power couldn't hear the cries of the people because they had blindfolded their eyes and ears.
Maithili said that before 2005, it was impossible to leave the house after 5-6 pm in Bihar.
"People used to say, 'Don't get out of the car after 5 pm; it's dangerous.' Today, as an artist and MLA, I leave Darbhanga at 3 am and reach my home in Patna safely. This change is a result of Nitish Kumar's good governance," she said as she heaped praise on the JDU leader, who was sworn in as Chief Minister of Bihar for a record-extending tenth time last year.
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She also praised Nitish Kumar's cycle scheme, which was introduced in 2006 to provide financial aid to Class 9 girls to purchase bicycles.
"In my own village, where there was no discussion in the name of school, all the girls started going to school when the cycle program started," Thakur, a resident of Madhubani, said.
"The opposition used to make fun of this program. But today, the same program is a model for the whole country," she added.
She also confronted the Opposition leaders who tried to interrupt her speech.
"The political careers of these senior opposition leaders may be longer than my entire lifespan, but why are you having so much trouble today when a daughter of Bihar is speaking the truth?" she shot back.
