RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav’s increasingly longer spells of absence from his lost political powerhouse and home turf of Bihar ever since the party’s rout in the 2010 Assembly polls haunted Bihar’s RJD leaders and workers on Tuesday as they observed the party’s 15th foundation day in Patna.
As both Mr Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi, a former chief minister of Bihar like him, noticeably stayed away from the foundation day celebrations in Patna, the event remained a low-key affair with many party workers acutely missing Mr Yadav’s distinctively rustic leadership style and humour-laden speech that always brought a personal touch to such gatherings. Many workers demurred at the virtues of Mr Yadav leading the foundation day celebrations in Delhi instead of Bihar.
Besides, with news reaching in Patna about Mr Yadav meeting Congress president Sonia Gandhi in Delhi on the RJD’s foundation day, there were both uneasy and speculative murmurs among Bihar’s RJD leaders about Mr Yadav becoming a minister in the Central UPA government and the possible consequences on the party in Bihar with regard to its troubled relations with the Congress in the state.