Former Bihar Health Minister Tej Pratap has vacated his government bungalow in Patna claiming that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Sushil Modi had released ghosts. “The ghosts were haunting me,” Pratap, the son of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Yadav, told the media on Wednesday.

The bungalow at 3, Deshratna Marg, was allotted to Pratap after he became the health minister in 2015. However, after the grand alliance of RJD, Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and the Congress collapsed in 2017, Pratap was among the many politicians who were asked to vacate the government bungalows. In October 2017, the Patna High Court stayed the government’s order. The state government then asked the occupants to pay rent at market rates.

The JD(U) dismissed Pratap’s ghost remarks as a publicity stunt. “Tej Pratap Yadav suffers from acute attention deficiency and is trying to compete with his younger brother Tejaswi who is hogging the limelight in the media,” the JD(U) said, according to Deccan Chronicle.

Pratap is known for his hyper-religious and superstitious beliefs. Earlier, he had shut the main entrance of the bungalow to make it “Vaastu compliant”, reported NDTV.

RJD spokesperson Shakti Singh Yadav, however, said Pratap had decided to vacate the bungalow after he got a second notice from the state building construction department. An unidentified party official told The Times of India that the department, which had sent the notice in October 2017, had warned him of heavy penalty.