When the deputy speaker asked him to sit down after he had spoken long on the issue of price rise, the inimitable Bihar leader shot back: 'Will my sitting down stop the rising prices?'

And taking potshots at the only two ministers sitting on the treasury benches at the time, Lalu Prasad, speaking in his famous Bihari accent, said: 'Just like bats hanging from the ceiling, the two think they are holding up the sky... and assume that they are running the government.'

He was referring to the absence of all ministers other than Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal and his Minister of State V. Narayansamy in the Lok Sabha during discussion on price rise.

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Ideological opponents, but neighbours here

The new seating arrangement in the front row of the Lok Sabha has pitted together strange bedfellows.

Mulayam Singh Yadav sits with bitter rival Bahujan Samaj Party's Dara Singh Chauhan, Communist Party of India-Marxist's Basudeb Acharia with ideological opponent National Democratic Alliance convenor Sharad Yadav, and Lalu Prasad's neighbour is H.D. Deve Gowda of Janata Dal-Secular, who was planning a Third Front against the United Progressive Alliance when Lalu Prasad was still part of it.