The rift within Rashtriya Janata Dal patriarch Lalu Yadav’s family continues to make headlines ahead of the assembly polls in Bihar, when it is essential for the Opposition parties to show a united front.
This time, it was over Lalu Yadav’s daughter Rohini Acharya’s move to unfollow the social media handles of the party, Lalu Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav and make her account private. While it blew over, the trajectory is clear – especially after the estrangement of Lalu Yadav’s elder son Tej Pratap Yadav.
Party insiders say the cause of this fresh rift is the sudden importance given to Sanjay Yadav, a close friend of Tejashwi Yadav. The MBA from Delhi University who had worked in Gurgaon, had been the backroom brains of the party for over a decade, supporting Tejashwi Yadav when his father was convicted in the fodder scam and other times of trial.
Over the last 10 years, Sanjay Yadav has been making key decisions for the party – be it creating seat-wise and district-wise databases or overseeing the party’s overall performance. He also decides who will be the party’s spokesperson on social media and elsewhere and how they will be prepared.
While the job is a coveted one — both within the party and the Yadav family, there had not been much resistance over the years.
But now suddenly, the 41-year-old from Haryana has been given a Rajya Sabha seat and publicly given the status of Tejashwi Yadav’s closest aide — like Ahmed Patel was to Congress’s Sonia Gandhi or KC Venugopal to her son Rahul Gandhi.
What made the sudden change more difficult for the party to swallow was Tejashwi Yadav’s declaration that only one seat would be given to a family, even if it is his own family. His sister Rohini Acharya, reports say, meant to contest this year and had her eye on any assembly seat under the Saran Lok Sabha constituency.
Before that, the big controversy over Sanjay Yadav broke started when he took the seat Tejashwi Yadav usually occupies on a bus used during the Bihar Adhikar Yatra. To address the issue, Tejashwi Yadav arranged for two Dalit leaders to occupy his seat the next day.
Party insiders close to Tejaswi Yadav say when Lalu Yadav chose him as his heir, he should be given a free hand. But his detractors have multiple complaints, including how Yadav Junior has stopped taking their phone calls.