Patna: When the major Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (United) leaders were paired for a joint campaign in the October 2005 Bihar Assembly elections, Sharad Yadav was paired with Shatrughan Sinha. ,Why would you hook us up with dancers and singers? (Why have you associated me with a singer-dancer),” Yadav asked state BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi. Yadav was then paired with the BJP’s Shahnawaz Hussain – which greatly pleased him as he did not want to overshadow the crowd-puller Sinha.
Yadav, a seven-time Lok Sabha and four-time Rajya Sabha MP, who breathed his last on Thursday night at a hospital in Haryana’s Gurugram at the age of 75, was full of wonder.
Actor Shekhar Suman, then host of the popular 1990s TV show ‘Movers and shakers’ was going to 1 Ane Marg in Patna – the official residence of the Chief Minister of Bihar – to interview Lalu Prasad Yadav, whom Suman liberally teased on the show. Suman told this correspondent that when Sharad Yadav expressed his gratitude by singing a tribal song, a shocked Lalu asked the actor, “Is Sharad Yadav Yes Gaate bhi hain?”. By this time, Lalu and Sharad had been political contemporaries for more than two decades.
Among the last socialist leaders to play a significant role in Indian politics during the 1990s coalition period, Yadav emerged as the face of the 1974 JP movement against Indira Gandhi in Madhya Pradesh. Imprisoned during the Emergency, he was later selected by Jayaprakash Narayan to contest a by-election from Jabalpur, which he won, marking his first term as an MP at the age of 27.
A mentor to both Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav was also his gateway to National Socialist leaders like former Deputy Prime Minister late Devi Lal.
Lalu reciprocated by fielding Yadav from the Madhepura parliamentary constituency in the early 1990s. However, as Lalu grew in political stature, Yadav’s phone calls were ignored and he was left out of mega political events in Bihar. Lalu did not hesitate to declare in public meetings that it was he who was talking about them, not the Yadavs.
In a private conversation with this correspondent in 1994, Yadav had said, “This man (Lalu) thinks he is alone.”
Yadav has had his fair share of controversies in his political career of nearly five decades. He found himself at the receiving end of widespread outrage in 1997 when he opposed the Women’s Reservation Bill In Parliament, educated women were referred to as “over-cut,
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‘Spent every single rupee in the election’
In 1996, George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar approached Sharad Yadav when he was planning to leave Janata Dal and form Samta Party. “Autumn Yes Lalu agreed with whatever we had to say against him, but told us to go ahead with the split (in the Janata Dal) and he would follow it later,” recalled a JD(U) leader who was involved in all three Was part of the leaders’ meeting.
Rebellion came, as promised, when Yadav threw his hat into the ring for the Janata Dal national president’s post in 1996, pitting him directly against Lalu. Sharad Yadav won the contest, forcing a split in the Janata Dal, which resulted in the formation of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Lalu took his revenge in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections when he defeated Yadav in Madhepura. This electoral battle then escalated to a rematch in 1999, after which Yadav defeated Lalu from Madhepura, earning the tag of ‘the giant killer’.
After his victory, Yadav reached the Patna airport to board a flight to Delhi, but had no money to pay for it. “I spent every single rupee in the election,” he told this reporter. Ultimately, Rajeev Ranjan (Lalan) Singh – who is now JD(U) national president – was called in to pay for the flight. Yadav became the Minister of Civil Aviation in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee administration (1999–2004).
Although Yadav was a mentor to both Lalu and Nitish, they did not trust him,
After Yadav rebelled against him in 1996, Lalu told this reporter that he felt as if he had been stabbed in the back, and said, “Sharad Yadav told me that he would not contest the elections.”
Similarly, when Nitish decided to part ways with ally BJP in 2013, Yadav – the then JD(U) national president – was not in favor of it. After over a dozen JD(U) MLAs met him to convince Nitish not to sever ties with the BJP, Yadav told this correspondent, “Nitish does not listen.”
One of the reasons why Yadav opposed Nitish’s decision was that it forced him to give up his post as the national convenor of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). After Nitish’s humiliating defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Yadav told this correspondent, “If Nitish had listened to me, we would have been Union ministers.”
Cut to 2017 and Yadav quickly opposes Nitish’s decision to walk out of the party grand alliance (Mahagathbandhan) to join hands with the BJP. By that time, Nitish was already irate with Yadav, who had persuaded then-Jitan Ram Manjhi not to step down as chief minister of Bihar – the exact opposite of what Nitish wanted Yadav to persuade Manjhi. After this Nitish demanded to disqualify Yadav as a member of the Rajya Sabha in 2017.
To the surprise of many political commentators, Yadav, Nitish and Lalu were seen sitting in the same room in Delhi last year, leading to speculation about a possible revival of the Janata Dal.
Reacting to the death of Yadav, who was instrumental in installing him as chief minister of Bihar in 1990, Lalu – who is in Singapore recovering from a kidney replacement operation – referred to Yadav as an “elder brother”. referred.
“We fought many times, but it did not give rise to personal bitterness,” Lalu said in a video statement released on Thursday night.
(Editing by Amritansh Arora)
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