LJD to merge with RJD today

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 19

Intending to bring the splinter groups of erstwhile Janata Dal, socialist stalwart Sharad Yadav has announced that his party Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD) will merge with former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav-led RJD on Sunday.

Politically, the decision may not have much significance either in Bihar or at national level, as Yadav, who has been keeping himself low for health reasons, and his party LJD could never make its presence felt since its launch after he parted ways with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD (U).

Need of the hour

Merger has been necessitated as an initiative of my regular efforts to bring together scattered Janata Parivar in view of the current political situation in the entire country. —Sharad Yadav, LJD leader

But symbolically, this marks Yadav’s coming together with Lalu Prasad after more than three decades, as both of them are seen to be at a fag end of their political career.

RJD chief Lalu Prasad had quit Janata Dal in 1997 to form his own party over his differences with its leadership in view of the probe into fodder scam gathering pace, in which he was the main accused. Sharad Yadav was then seen as his rival within the Janata Dal, and he later joined with Kumar to end RJD’s 15-year reign in Bihar in 2005.

“This step (merger) has been necessitated as an initiative of my regular efforts for bringing together scattered Janata parivar in view of the current political situation in the country,” Sharad Yadav (74) said in a statement, claiming that the BJP government has been a failure and people are looking for an alternative.

Noting that the Janata Dal alone had 143 seats in the Lok Sabha in 1989, he said the agenda for social justice had lost its pace with the disintegration of the party over the years, and this needs to be revived, said Yadav, whose daughter had fought the 2020 Assembly elections in Bihar on the RJD ticket, but lost.

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