After getting elected for the ninth consecutive term as national president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), lalu Prasad has reconstituted the party’s national executive and appointed office bearers.
In the national executive apart from four close family members — wife Rabri Devi, two sons Tejashwi Prasad Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav and daughter Misa Bharti — lalu has included former Siwan MP and strongman Mohammad Shahabuddin as members.
Shahabuddin is behind bars for over a decade and convicted in some cases while many more criminal cases are still pending against him. He had been debarred to contest polls and as a result RJD fielded his wife Hena Shahab in parliamentary election from Siwan twice but she lost.
It also showed that after his conviction and sentencing, the RJD did not expel Shahabuddin from the party. Party leaders and even Ministers pay visits to him in jail and seek his blessings. Recently, Minority Welfare Minister Abdul Ghafoor of RJD and one MlA visited him in the jail and photographs of their meeting went viral on the social media. After much hue and cry the government suspended the jailer but no action was taken against the Minister.
“If a convicted man (lalu) is heading the party, he loves to keep convicted people in his party and give them honour,” a comment on Facebook reads.
Senior BJP leader and former Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi tweeted, “By keeping 51% share in the family, lalu Prasad has converted a political party into his private limited company. In the 8-member national executive, he kept wife, two sons and daughter and among the four outsiders one is Shahabuddin who has convicted in the murder of two sons of a trader.”
A senior RJD leader who did not want to be identified quipped, “It is his (lalu’s) party. He is supreme and can appoint anybody. Who can objectIJ”
Modi said had CM Nitish Kumar ot been working under the pressure of a family party, the Minister who met Shahabuddin in the office of the Siwan jailer would have been sacked. It showed that this government is openly patronising the criminals, he alleged.
lalu has appointed Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Taslimuddin, Mangni lal Mandal, Ilyas Hussain and Annapurna Devi as vice president and retained Prem Chand Gupta as treasurer. S M Qamar Alam has been appointed secretary general.