10 lakh jobs, not tall promises, is Bihar's need of the hour: Tejashwi Yadav takes a dig at NDA

Taking a dig at the NDA's free Covid-19 vaccine and 19 lakh jobs promise in their manifesto for Bihar Assembly elections 2020, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav on Saturday said that he will not promise one crore jobs. “I am promising 10 lakh jobs. I could have also promised one crore jobs just for the sake of the promise. But I am not doing that because this will become a reality in the first meeting of the Cabinet. This will be the first time in the country that 10 lakh employment opportunities will be created at one go. This figure is what we require in the state’s workforce at present,” Tejashwi said.

Releasing RJD's manifesto for the Bihar polls in Patna on Saturday, Tejashwi said that there is a difference between earning and employment. He explained that there are employment opportunities for teachers, professors, junior engineers, doctors, nurses lab technicians.

“We need more police for the law and order of the state. Manipur is a smaller state but it has more police per lakh population than Bihar,” Tejashwi said.

The BJP on Thursday drew flak shortly after it released its manifesto promising several sops, including 19 lakh jobs to the people of Bihar.

“Till a day back, the BJP was questioning how the Mahagatbandhan chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Yadav would provide jobs to 10 lakh people in Bihar. Their chief ministerial candidate Nitish Kumar too had joined the chorus in ridiculing Tejashwi on the job offer. Now the same BJP has promised in its manifesto to provide 19 lakh jobs to Biharis. The saffron party has actually reduced itself to a laughing stock,” argued senior Congress legislator and AICC media coordinator Prem Chandra Mishra.

Taking swipe at the BJP, the Congress had tweeted, “If you had delivered on the promise of 2 crore jobs earlier, then there would have been no need for fresh 19 lakh jobs.”