Patna: When prominent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Janata Dal (United) leaders were paired up for joint campaigning in the run-up to the October 2005 Bihar assembly election, Sharad Yadav was paired with Shatrughan Sinha. “Humko nachhania-gawaiya ke sath kyun laga diye ho (Why have you paired me with a singer-dancer),” Yadav asked state BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi. Yadav was then paired with BJP’s Shahnawaz Hussain — which made him very happy since he did not want to be overshadowed by Sinha, a crowd-puller.
Yadav, a seven-time Lok Sabha and four-time Rajya Sabha MP who breathed his last Thursday night at a hospital in Haryana’s Gurugram at the age of 75, was full of surprises.
Actor Shekhar Suman, then the host of the popular 1990s TV show ‘Movers and Shakers’ was visiting 1 Aney Marg in Patna – the official residence of the chief minister of Bihar — to interview Lalu Prasad Yadav, whom Suman lampooned generously in the show. Suman told this correspondent that when Sharad Yadav obliged him by singing a tribal song, a visibly shocked Lalu asked the actor, “Does Sharad ji also sing?”. By this time, Lalu and Sharad had been political contemporaries for over two decades.
Among the last socialist leaders who played key roles in Indian politics in the 1990s coalition era, Yadav emerged as the face of the 1974 JP movement against Indira Gandhi in Madhya Pradesh. Imprisoned during the Emergency, he was later chosen by Jayaprakash Narayan to contest a bypoll from Jabalpur which he won, marking his first term as a parliamentarian at the age of 27.
Mentor to both Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav was also their gateway to national socialist leaders like former deputy prime minister late Devi Lal.
Lalu expressed his gratitude by fielding Yadav from Madhepura parliamentary constituency in the early 1990s. However, as Lalu’s political stature grew, Yadav’s phone calls were ignored and he was excluded from Bihar’s mega political events. Lalu did not shy away from declaring in public meetings that he was the one calling the shots, not Yadav.
“This man (Lalu) thinks he is the only one,” Yadav had said in a private conversation with this correspondent in 1994.
Yadav courted his fair share of controversies in his political career spanning nearly five decades. He found himself at the receiving end of widespread outrage in 1997 when he, while opposing the Women’s Reservation Bill in Parliament, referred to educated women as “par-kati”.
Also Read: Embracing Congress & BJP, doling out laptops — how Lohiaites have strayed far from his ideology
‘Spent every single rupee in election’
In 1996, George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar approached Sharad Yadav when they were planning to leave Janata Dal and form the Samata Party. “Sharad ji agreed to everything we had to say against Lalu but told us to proceed with the split (in Janata Dal) and he would follow later,” recalled a JD(U) leader who was part of a meeting of the three leaders.
The rebellion came, as promised, when Yadav threw his hat in the ring for the post of national president of the Janata Dal in 1996, pitting him directly against Lalu. Sharad Yadav won the contest by forcing a split in the Janata Dal that resulted in the creation of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). Lalu had his revenge in the 1998 Lok Sabha polls when he trounced Yadav in Madhepura. This electoral fight then headed for a rematch in 1999 after which Yadav earned the tag of ‘giant killer’ by defeating Lalu from Madhepura.
Following his victory, Yadav arrived at the Patna airport to board a flight to Delhi, but without the money to pay for it. “I spent every single rupee in the election,” he told this correspondent. Ultimately, Rajiv Ranjan (Lalan) Singh — now national president of JD(U) — was called to pay for the flight. Yadav would go on to become the minister of civil aviation in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee administration (1999-2004).
However, though Yadav was a mentor to both Lalu and Nitish, neither trusted him.
After Yadav rebelled against him in 1996, Lalu told this correspondent that he felt like he had been stabbed in the back, adding, “Sharad Yadav told me that he would not contest.”
Similarly, when Nitish decided to part ways with ally BJP in 2013, Yadav — then national president of JD(U) — was not in favour. After over a dozen JD(U) MLAs met him to convince him to persuade Nitish not to snap the ties with BJP, Yadav told this correspondent, “Nitish does not listen.”
One reason why Yadav opposed Nitish’s decision was because it would have forced him to vacate his position as national convener of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). After Nitish’s humiliating defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Yadav remarked to this correspondent, “Had Nitish listened to me, we would have been Union ministers.”
Cut to 2017 and Yadav was quick to oppose Nitish’s decision to walk out of the Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) to join hands with the BJP. By that time, Nitish was already irked by Yadav who convinced then Jitan Ram Manjhi not to step down as Bihar CM — exactly the opposite of what Nitish wanted Yadav to convince Manjhi to do. Nitish then sought to disqualify Yadav as a member of the Rajya Sabha in 2017.
To the surprise of many political commentators, Yadav, Nitish and Lalu were photographed sitting in the same room in Delhi last year, spurring speculation about a possible revival of the Janata Dal.
Reacting to the death of Yadav, who played a key role in installing him as Bihar’s chief minister in 1990, Lalu — who is in Singapore, recovering from a kidney replacement operation — referred to Yadav as an “elder brother”.
“We fought so many times, but it did not create personal bitterness,” Lalu said in a video statement released Thursday night.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: From Lalu’s guide to his man, foe & now ally – how Sharad Yadav’s career is tied to RJD boss
For more latest Politics News Click Here