RANJAN YADAV JOINS BJP, HITS OUT AT LALU
Former MP Ranjan Yadav, a trusted aide of Lalu Prasad in 1990s, on Tuesday joined the BJP and lashed out at the RJD supremo for presiding over ‘jungle raj’ in Bihar during his party's 15 years' rule. Mothers and daughters never felt safe on the streets as utter lawlessness prevailed in Bihar during the RJD rule with murder, kidnapping and related crimes being order of the day, he alleged after joining the BJP in presence of Union Minister Ananth Kumar and other BJP leaders at the party office here.
The 70 year-old leader, who had represented RJD for two terms in Rajya Sabha (19902002), besides being a member of Lok Sabha between 2009-2014 from Patliputra constituency on JD(U) ticket, spewed venom on Prasad saying that there was no development in Bihar during the RJD rule. Yadav, acclaimed as the RJD's ideologue in the 1990s, tore to shreds the RJD supremo’s pet agenda of ‘Mandal politics’ and social justice saying that Prasad stood for neither as the RJD government did not fill up five lakh vacancies in government jobs during its entire rule to deprive 1.35 lakh OBC youths of jobs post-implementation of the Mandal Commission report in 1993 providing 27 per cent reservation for the OBCs in government jobs.
Similarly, Prasad was never sincere to his party's social justice plank and as far as he was concerned justice always ended with prosperity of his family members, Yadav alleged. Recalling the days of impoverishment of the RJD leader's family, he said quoting the RJD supremo that his mother could not make out the value of Rs 100 currency note and the RJD supremo used to tell her that it was indeed Rs 100 note.
“Those were bad days of the RJD leader's family,” Yadav said as to how far Prasad’s family had come from those days of penury.
Further tearing into Prasad’s claims of being the ‘undisputed leader’ of the influential Yadav community in Bihar, he said if it was so then why he had lost Pataliputra Lok Sabha seat in 2009 given that there were five lakh Yadav voters in the constituency. So was the case in Raghopur Assembly seat where Prasad’s wife Rabri Devi, herself a former chief minister, lost in 2010 Assembly polls to a newcomer despite the Yadav voters holding sway there.
Referring to the RJD supremo’s remarks that the ‘Hindus too eat beef ’, the former MP said such comment should not be taken seriously. Yadav, who had joined Ramvilas Paswan’s LJP after quitting RJD before jumping on the JD(U)'s bandwagon in 2009, defended his move to join the BJP saying that he was an eternal optimist and so he had reposed faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership for ushering in development in Bihar in the event of the BJP-led NDA being elected to power at the hustings.