44 Years in Politics, Yet Lalu Prasad Yadav's Relevance in Bihar Remains Undiminished

 Despite the fact that the former chief minister has been convicted in several cases of corruption, for his supporters he is the only politician who can take on the BJP. 

  

by

 

Nalin Verma 

Patna: On Friday, April 9, when the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) pleaded for time to file a counter affidavit, the high court of Jharkhand deferred its hearing of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s bail application to April 16.

This bail application by the former chief minister of undivided Bihar is for a fodder scam case related to the Dumka treasury.

“Our client (Lalu) has already procured regular bail in three cases in which he had been convicted after completing half of each sentence,” said Lalu’s Ranchi-based counsel Prabhat Kumar. “In this case too, he has completed more than half the sentence and we hope the court will grant him bail when it hears the application on April 16. If the court grants him bail in this case, he will be out of judicial custody.”

Whether or not the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief gets bail is up to the court to decide. But every time Lalu’s bail petition is listed in court, the people of Bihar in particular and the country in general pay attention. Lalu has been jailed for nearly four years in various fodder scam cases and the courts have refused him bail three times in the past. But a sense of optimism overwhelms his cadres and supporters whenever the court sets in motion the process to hear his plea.

 

Lalu Prasad Yadav had been central to Mahagathbandhan in 2015 before it fell apart in 2017.  Photo: PTI

Indian courts have convicted many politicians in the past. Once convicted, most of those leaders have vanished into oblivion. For instance, Lalu Prasad’s predecessor, Jagannath Mishra, one of the most powerful and popular leaders of his time – he was Bihar’s chief minister three times – vanished from public memory once convicted and his death in August 2019 went unnoticed. But Lalu seems to have a firm grip on the public imagination, even after being convicted in several cases of corruption.

 

Electoral approval

Lalu was first elected to the Lok Sabha from Bihar’s Chhapra seat (now called Saran) in 1977 – nearly 44 years ago. After that, he was seldom out of a legislature. He did lose elections, of course. He lost the Chhapra seat in 1980, but was elected as an MLA from Sonepur, an assembly segment of Chhapra, the same year. In 1985, he was elected again as the MLA from Sonepur and in 1989 he was elected to the Lok Sabha again from Chhapra. However, he resigned from his Lok Sabha seat to become Bihar’s chief minister in 1990.

In 1997, he had to resign his chief minister’s position in favour of his wife, Rabri Devi, when the CBI charge-sheeted him in various fodder scam cases. Then he contested the Lok Sabha polls in 1998 from Madhepura, defeating Sharad Yadav and entering the Lok Sabha again. He lost to Sharad Yadav in 1999 but was soon elected to the Rajya Sabha. In 2004, he was elected from both Chhapra and Madhepura and joined Manmohan Singh’s government at the Centre as the railway minister. In 2009, he won from Saran again.

Lalu was an MP from Saran when he was convicted for the first time in 2013. The electorate had never rejected him. Only the judicial verdict stripped him of his MP titles and barred him from contesting elections.

It’s hard to find a leader anywhere else in India who remains relevant 44 years after first stepping into a legislature. Both the world and the villages of Bihar have undergone drastic changes in the last 30 years, particularly since globalisation began in 1990.

But the popularity of the 72-year-old RJD boss remains intact. Reporters from across the country who covered the 2020 assembly elections in Bihar remember how most of the voters in the hinterlands said, “We will vote for Lalu”. And when the reporters said that Lalu was in jail, the voters shot back, “So what? We will vote for his son, Tejashwi”. The RJD had removed Lalu’s image from its banner and posters. But Lalu dominated the voters’ thoughts.

Leader of the masses

Why does Lalu live in the heart of his voters despite multiple judicial indictments? Do his voters – mainly those from the backward classes, the deprived sections of society and the embattled minorities – actually believe that Lalu is a corrupt leader? After all, the CBI charge-sheeted him and the lower courts convicted him in as many as four cases related to disproportionate withdrawals from various treasuries, colloquially known as the fodder scam. He went to Birsa Munda jail in February 2018 and was shifted to Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences (RIMS), Ranchi, when his health deteriorated after a CBI special court convicted him in another case. The court allowed him to meet only three persons with appointments sanctioned by the prison superintendent every Saturday.

As his biographer, I met Lalu with official permission on three Saturdays in 2019 to discuss the release of his biography, Gopalganj to Raisina – My Political Journey. I was amazed to find hundreds of people from various parts of Bihar outside the RIMS, waiting to meet Lalu. I asked a visitor from Bhagalpur, “All of you know that Lalu ji can meet only three persons. Why have you come from so far?” The visitor said, “I have come to see the place where he is. That’s all. I am happy.”

The atmosphere outside the RIMS on each of the three Saturdays I visited Lalu was like a fairground. Snacks sellers were always in the campus of the special ward where Lalu was lodged; they got lots of customers. Why did the people of Bihar love a political leader condemned by the CBI and judiciary?

Perhaps it is because no other leader in the history of Bihar has been as rooted in the soil as Lalu. He effortlessly uses idioms that Bihar villagers use in their homes, community gatherings, lives and lore. He has an elephantine memory for names. When he visits any village anywhere in Bihar, he calls people by their names. And he has a penchant for the hinterlands. He loves sharing food, tobacco and banter with the villagers in deepest Bihar. He interacts with the people; never delivers a monologue.

Lalu has also been relentless in a ‘war’ against the Sangh Parivar ever since he became the chief minister of Bihar in 1990. He has never made a compromise with the RSS-BJP in either the L.K. Advani era or Narendra Modi era, even during the toughest times of his life.

He has abrasively belittled the ‘mightiest’ in the Sangh establishment – a 2015 video in which he mimicked Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the assembly elections in Bihar went viral. And when reporters asked him to comment on Union home minister Amit Shah, Lalu said, “Woh (Amit Shah) kab ka neta hai? Woh toh lift mein phans jata hai (When did Shah become a leader? He gets trapped in lifts).” [Shah had been trapped in a lift at a Patna guest house just a few days earlier.] Lalu’s audacious comments on the Sangh perhaps give his voters from the minorities and deprived sections of society confidence.

 This confidence comes through in the fact that although the RJD is a regional party, under Lalu’s stewardship, it has always inflicted damage on the BJP. In the 1990s, the RJD prevented the BJP from making any kind of political breakthrough in Bihar.

 

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, when the Narendra Modi-led BJP won 33 seats, Lalu was behind bars. However, when Lalu emerged from jail in 2015, he formed a Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) with Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and the Congress party and turned the tables on the BJP in the assembly elections.

When Nitish returned to the BJP in 2017, Lalu went to jail in early 2018. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP-led NDA won 39 seats in Bihar. But in the 2020 assembly polls, the RJD, led by Lalu’s son, Tejashwi Yadav, prevented the BJP from winning Bihar. Though the BJP propped up the Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) to gain the upper hand in the post-polls scenario, the RJD emerged as the single largest party with 75 MLAs, smashing the BJP’s dream of forming a single-party government in Bihar. The BJP has split many parties in many other states to form its governments, but finds no way to split the RJD in Bihar.

 

File photo of Lalu Prasad Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav. Photo: PTI/Files

All this, perhaps, has created the perception among Lalu’s voters in particular and the anti-RSS-BJP forces across the country in general that Lalu has the effective potential to take on the Narendra Modi-led BJP despite his limitations.

Case histories

Lalu has been convicted in four of five cases related to the fodder scam. He was convicted in two cases related to the Chaibasa treasury on September 30, 2013 and on January 24, 2018. He was also convicted in the Deoghar treasury case on February 23, 2018 and in the Dumka treasury case on February 19, 2018.

A case against him related to the fraudulent withdrawal of Rs 139.35 crore from Doranda treasury in Ranchi is still pending in a CBI special court in Ranchi.

The RJD chief has secured bail in the Deoghar Treasury case and the two Chaibasa treasury cases. If he gets bail in the Dumka treasury case, which has been listed for hearing in the high court of Jharkhand on April 16, he will be out of prison.

Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, author and professor of journalism and mass communications at Invertis University, Bareilly.

SOURCE ;  thewire.in

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