Lalu sets ghost after Nitish

Is there any connection between a ghost and the pruning of a mango tree at the Bihar Chief Minister's official residence here under which Railway Minister Lalu Prasad once luxuriated on balmy summer evenings?

Prasad would have us believe so, as at the time of vacating the 1, Anne Marg residence, he had said he had tied a ghost to the tree to keep troubling new incumbent Nitish Kumar.

"Now that they have cut the branches of the tree, the ghost will cut short Nitish Kumar's rule," Prasad told reporters in an informal chat at 10, Circular Road, the new residence of his wife, Leader of Opposition Rabri Devi.

When it was pointed out that Kumar claimed not to believe in superstition, Prasad quipped, "Sab bekaar baat hai (it is all nonsense). Why else has the administrator of the state Religious Trust Board appointed by the chief minister organised so many recitals of Hanuman Chalisa at the Mahavir temple at the behest of Kumar every day?"

When asked to comment on the matter at a press conference, Kumar was first reluctant to speak but later insisted that the branches were cut at the suggestion of the director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, who wanted to graft another kind of mango to create a new variety of the fruit.

"Woh ab khud bhootpoorva ho gaye hain is liye bhoot ki baat karte hain (Prasad has become a thing of the past and so loves talking about ghosts)," Kumar shot back.