Raghuvansh Prasad severs 32-year-long ties with the RJD

Was reportedly unhappy over talk of his arch rival and LJP MP Rama Singh joining the party.

PATNA In a huge setback to Bihar’s main opposition RJD, its national vice president and former Union Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh resigned on Thursday dealing a huge blow to the party ahead of the state assembly polls.

Singh, who was instrumental in shaping and implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) that proved to be a saviour for the distressed rural population during the national lockdown, severed 32-year-old ties with Lalu Prasad Yadav and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Thursday. Singh’s political association with the RJD chief goes back to an era when both were mentored in politics by Bihar’s Socialist legend Karpoori Thakur.

Singh is currently in Delhi’s AIIMS recuperating from post-Covid complications. From his hospital bed, he sent a barely-decipherable handwritten missive to Lalu, who too is convalescing at Ranchi’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences. Singh wrote he “stood behind” Lalu for 32 years after Thakur’s death, but “not any more”.

Speculation was rife that Singh was joining Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) once he recovered, but he apparently is not keen on any tie-up with the BJP which is reportedly very interested in getting him on board.

Although he does not bring value to the electoral arena having lost the 2014 and 2019 elections from Vaishali – his old constituency – his departure ahead of the Bihar assembly elections, is of deep-seated significance to the state’s Opposition.

The founding member of the RJD never wavered in his backing of Lalu even in bad times, unlike his teammates Vijay Krishna, Ram Kripal Yadav and Raghunath Jha who crossed over to the JD(U) or the BJP. This despite the short shrift Lalu gave in 2009 when the UPA returned to power.

The RJD was a major UPA constituent then and in its first term, Singh, who was the Rural Development minister, made the MGNREGA a household name in Indian villages. There is credible data to establish that the scheme that was rolled out through the gram sabha and the panchayat to give seasonal employment to the poor gave a fillip to rural consumption and spending until it was gradually phased out by the Modi government. The NDA was compelled to revive the MGNREGA in April-May this year when lakhs of urban poor migrated to their villages when the country was under lockdown.

In 2009, Lalu refused to make Singh a cabinet minister fearing his persona had grown larger than the RJD and himself. He suspected that Singh had become “too close” to Sonia Gandhi whose National Advisory Council (NAC) had pursued MGNREGA as a flagship project.

Case in point: As the news of his departure from the RJD became viral, Sonia was among the first to call him.

Lalu too phoned him a couple of times but Singh refused to answer. Among the other callers were BJP president JP Nadda and Ashwani Choubey, central minister from Bihar.

“The impact is psychological but for Lalu, it’s a major setback,” an RJD source said. Singh, a Rajput, was never a community leader. He won his seat largely on the RJD’s Muslim-Yadav combine but with the Rajput votes as an add-on, until 2014 when the community moved en bloc to the BJP.

“But right now, Nitish is interested in finishing off what remains of the RJD. Exits like Singh’s will demoralise Lalu’s core voters and keep them away from participating in the elections and voting enthusiastically,” said a Patna political observer.

What tipped the scales for Singh was Lalu’s move to induct Rama Kishore Singh, who defeated him in 2014 as a candidate of Ram Vilas Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). Singh petitioned the Patna High Court, seeking his opponent’s disqualification on the ground that in his affidavit to the Election Commission he did not disclose information on a 2001kidnapping case for which he was convicted Rama Kishore was framed in several criminal cases. The LJP did not give Rama Kishore a ticket in 2019 after which he moved closer to the RJD.

Singh was also upset with Lalu’s heir-apparent Tejashwi Prasad’s functioning and the intra-family feuds that beset the RJD.

The pre-poll scenario does not promise much to the Opposition for another reason. Jitan Ram Manjhi, a former Lalu ally, has joined the NDA, taking away some Dalit votes with him. The only straw Lalu and his family are clutching at is the restiveness in Paswan’s son and MP, Chirag Paswan. Young and ambitious, Chirag has signalled his impatience with Nitish frequently and has virtually said that the LJP is unprepared to fight the elections under his stewardship. The LJP commands the committed votes of the Dalit Paswans that count more sizeably than Manjhi’s votes.

“Manjhi cannot compensate for Paswan’s loss,” a JD(U) source said.

Although Lalu and Tejashwi are fanning Chirag’s disquietude, sources said the prospect of two go-getter dynasts co-existing in one coalition is “remote”.