Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad may not find anything unusual in overseeing the work of the key ministries headed by his two sons in Bihar but he remains an 'outsider', at least for the babus of the Nitish Kumar government.


A press release issued by the Delhi-based Bihar Information Centre of the state government has 'censored' the presence of Lalu Prasad during a recent meeting between his son Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and Union minister for highways and surface transport Nitin Gadkari.


An India Today report says that Tejaswi, the deputy chief minister in the Nitish Kumar government who also holds the additional portfolio of road construction, had called on Gadkari to discuss the Bihar's related projects on Tuesday evening.


The meeting, which lasted about 90 minutes, was also attended among others by Lalu. Tejashwi subsequently posted a picture of their meeting on his Twitter handle in which his father and he were seen holding a bouquet with Gadkari.


A similar picture was later released by the Bihar government's public relations office, though it did not contain Lalu's image. Curiously, the portion of Lalu's photograph was conveniently Photoshopped out of the picture. And a very bad job it was, we may add.


In the 'censored' photograph, a ghost image of a white cutout of Lalu appears alongside the photographs of Tejaswi and Gadkari.
Lalu's 'censored' picture came close on the heels of the widespread criticism over his alleged interference in the day-to-day affairs of the ministries headed by Tejashwi as well as his elder son Tej Pratap Yadav in the Nitish Kumar government.


Earlier, Lalu had visited the Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) in Patna to oversee the facilities prompting the Opposition to question his authority to do so. Similarly, he had asked the Darbhanga civil surgeon to look into the retrenchment of some of the para-medical workers at the medical college and hospital in the district.