RJD splits in Bihar legislative council, Raghuvansh resigns from top party post

In a significant jolt to the party in its home state, five leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) resigned from the party and joined Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United). Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, one of the founding members of the opposition party and also its national vice president, resigned from the post citing displeasure over the functioning of the party.

Patna: The RJD suffered a big jolt on Tuesday when five of its eight members of the legislative council in Bihar quit the opposition party and joined Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) even as Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, one of its founding members, resigned as the national vice-president.

It was a day of mayhem for the main opposition party as S M Qamar Alam, a national general secretary of the RJD, walked to the chamber of Vidhan Parishad Acting Chairman Awadhesh Narain Singh along with four others to tender their resignation.

The other MLCs who resigned are Sanjay Prasad, Radha Charan Seth, Ranvijay Kumar Singh and Dilip Rai. The acting chairman said the five MLCs have been recognised as a separate group, the merger of which into the JD (U) has been approved.

Meanwhile, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, a former Union minister, who is down with COVID-19 and admitted to AIIMS, Patna, shot off a letter to the party leadership conveying his decision to step down as national vice-president as he was unhappy over the type of people being inducted into the RJD of late.

Singh is said to have been miffed over reports that Rama Singh, a mafia don-turned-politician formerly associated with Ram Vilas Paswan's LJP who had defeated the RJD veteran in his pocket borough of Vaishali in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, was likely to join the party founded and headed by Lalu Prasad.

PTI