Hours after Lalu Yadav hands over party symbols, Tejashwi asks leaders to hand them back

RJD president Lalu Prasad gave away party tickets to several candidates until his son and heir apparent Tejashwi Yadav overturned the decision.

An incident that indicates the thickening of  electoral plot in Bihar, leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), who were given party symbols for the Assembly polls yesterday evening, were recalled late at night and asked to return the symbols.

Hours after returning from Delhi on Monday, RJD president Lalu Prasad gave away party tickets to several candidates until his son and heir apparent Tejashwi Yadav early on Tuesday pointed out that the INDIA bloc, helmed in Bihar by the Rashtriya Janata Dal, was yet to formally announce a seat-sharing formula.

Tejashwi Yadav along with several top leaders form the Opposition bloc met Congress general secretary KC Venugopal in Delhi on Monday to iron out the last-minute differences over seat-sharing formula. However, the talks remained inconclusive as Congress, reportedly, did not budge from their initial ask of 70 seats -- which according to RJD sources are tenable in the state's changed electoral scenario.

However, Tejashwi Yadav, who returned from Delhi a few hours after his parents did, was said to have been upset with the development. According to RJD sources, cited by news agency PTI, the Yadav scion told his father that photographs and video clips of party candidates with the symbol could not go down well with alliance partners with whom a deal was yet to be struck.

Hence, distribution of party symbols was brought to a stop and, well past midnight, those who had got these, were asked to return the tickets on the ground of "technical issues".

Prominent among those who got RJD symbols were Sunil Singh (Parbatta), who quit Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) last week, and Narendra Kumar Singh alias Bogo, a several-term former MLA from Matihani, who had won the seat twice for the party headed by the CM. Several sitting RJD MLAs like Bhai Virendra, Chandrashekhar Yadav (Madhepura) and Israil Mansuri (Kanti) had also come out of the party supremo's house, waving the party symbol.

The scene was reminiscent of last year's Lok Sabha polls, when the RJD supremo had distributed a number of party tickets, without waiting for a nod from alliance partners, who eventually fell in line.

Besides the Congress, the RJD has among its allies three Left parties and former state minister Mukesh Sahni's Vikassheel Insan Party. A truck is expected with Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren's JMM and RLJP of former Union Minister Pashupati Kumar Paras.