Lalu Yadav’s family has had an affiliation with kidnappings, murders and riots for a long time. In the latest incident involving the political family, a “food riot” took place at the wedding ceremony of Lalu’s son Tej Pratap Yadav. The ceremony was taking place at Bihar Veterinary College, where Lalu has worked for some months during his youth. There were preparations to welcome 50,000 baraatis, and although there were only 20000 baraatis, a food riot still took place.
When VVIPs left the venue, a rumour was spread that better food items were being served in the VVIP pavilion. People rushed towards the VVIP pavilion upon hearing the rumour and looted food items like ice creams and sweets, and broke crockery, chairs and manhandled media personnel. Lalu’s party workers are known for vandalism in Bihar. During Lalu’s rule as Chief Minister, they used to be involved in the business of kidnapping, extortion of money, and murdering leaders of other parties. Now that Lalu is no more in power they are stealing food and crockery.
Lalu’s son is marrying Aishwarya Rai, the daughter of RJD leader and former minister Chandrika Rai. Aishwarya has completed her graduation in history from Miranda House, Delhi University and MBA from Amity University, Noida while Tej Pratap Yadav dropped out of school after failing in 12th exams. Aishwarya’s father is MLA from RJD and her grandfather Daroga Prasad Rai was Chief Minister of Bihar from the Congress Party. Lalu is well known for using marriage alliances to consolidate his political power, like dynasts have done in the past and continue to do so today. Earlier, Lalu Yadav married his daughter Raj Laxmi off to Samajwadi Party patriarch, Mulayam Singh Yadav’s grand-nephew, Tej Pratap Singh. It seems that Lalu is an ardent supporter of intra-caste marriages because Aishwarya Rai also comes from the OBC Yadav community, same as that of his family.
Lalu’s party ruled Bihar for almost two decades. With the latest embarrassment in the form of a food riot, he should introspect as to why he has not been able to provide food to people of the state despite his fiery slogans of socialism and equality. His party’s rule is popularly known as “Jungle Raj“, where daylight kidnappings, murders, extortion from businessmen, killing leaders of the opposition were all regular occurrences. He himself is facing a jail sentence for the infamous “fodder scam”, while many other cases like Disproportionate assets, railway tender scam, benami properties case, Patna zoo soil scam are pending against him in court. Like Congress his party is also blatantly nepotistic and he runs the party like a family business without caring for internal democracy. While he was in jail for corruption, he made wife Rabri Devi, who is an illiterate, as the Chief Minister of Bihar. During his alliance with Nitish Kumar in the recent assembly elections, he asked for senior ministerial posts and deputy chief minister post for both of his sons, ignoring the fact that both of his sons failed in their board exams and could not complete graduation.
This is not the first time when such lack of discipline is displayed by RJD workers. In his elder daughter Misa Yadav’s wedding in 1999 around 50 cars and pieces of new furniture were taken away from showrooms in Patna for the wedding function. Police did not dare touch his party workers when he was in power.
Opposition leaders lambasted the RJD workers, saying “The incident showed the original traits and culture of the RJD and its workers. If Lalu Yadav and his family are not able to control their own ‘rowdy’ workers, how can they claim to govern a state,” JD (U) spokesperson Neeraj Kumar said. This type of hooliganism is atypical of RJD workers. If they are doing such things in the RJD supremo’s family function even when his party is not in power, one can only imagine their behavior if the RJD comes back to power in the state.
