Bihar Assembly Elections 2025: Ahead of poll battle, Lalu Prasad grappling with war within ‘parivar’

His daughter Rohini Acharya has turned rebel and unfollowed her father and brothers Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav, and sister Misa Bharti on social media, following a dispute within the family

Patna: Veteran politician Lalu Prasad is fighting three battles at a time.

First, a legal battle that is underway, with a judgment likely to be handed down next month in the IRCTC scam, in which he has been charged with graft while serving as Railway Minister in the UPA-I regime.

Second, his political battle where he is trying to pull out all stops to wrest Bihar from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and help his son Tejashwi Yadav don the Chief Minister’s throne in November.

Third, and a more dramatic one, is the war within his own ‘pariwar’ where his daughter Rohini Acharya has turned rebel and unfollowed her father and brothers Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav and sister Misa Bharti (who is a Lok Sabha member) on social media, following a dispute within the family over Tejashwi’s confidant Sanjay Yadav, who is also a Rajya Sabha member.

It was believed that Rohini wanted to contest the upcoming Assembly elections but was given a cold shoulder by Tejashwi, who, she feels, acted on the advice Sanjay and spurned the suggestion of Rohini throwing her hat in the election ring. It is also believed that Lalu Prasad stood by his son and reprimanded his daughter, who later unfollowed all her family members on social media.

Now, she follows only three persons: Shamsher Singh, her husband, Rahat Indori (the late lyricist-cum-poet), and a media house.

“... If anyone can prove that I have ever made any request to anyone for myself or someone else, and that the claim that I donated my kidney to my respected father is a lie, I will withdraw from political and public life,” she wrote on X, expressing her strong displeasure with the goings on within the family.

Who is Rohini

Rohini, who has done her MBBS but preferred to stay as a housewife with her husband in Singapore, was in the news when she contested the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Saran, a seat represented by Lalu Prasad four times since 1977. However, she lost to BJP’s Rajiv Pratap Rudy and since then had been lying low till recently when she participated in Rahul Gandhi’s 'Voters’ Adhikar Yatra' last month.

She donated a kidney to her father in Singapore in 2022, which gave the RJD chief a new lease of life.

However, Rohini's relationship within the family got strained when earlier this month she slammed Tejashwi’s confidant Sanjay for occupying the front seat in a rath (chariot) reserved for her father. Her angst against Sanjay was reportedly for putting a spoke in her political ambition.

She, however, has denied she nurses any political ambition. Rohini, who shared an old photograph of her being taken to a hospital in Singapore where she donated a kidney to her ailing father, wrote on X: “Those who carry their lives in the palm of their hands possess the qualities to make great sacrifices. Fearlessness and self-respect flow in their blood.”

She wrote that she had fulfilled her duty as a daughter and as a sister and will continue to do so in the future. “I have no craving for any position, nor do I nurse any political ambition. For me, self-respect is of paramount importance,” she wrote on social media.