Lalu Prasad Yadav's son and former Bihar minister Tej Pratap Yadav, who was recently expelled from the RJD, targeted his former party on Tuesday over the conduct of MLA Bhai Virendra who had been embroiled in a controversy pertaining to a telephone call recording that has gone viral.
Yadav family's beleagured son reacted angrily in a post on his X (formerly known as Twitter) handle and attacked the Maner MLA against whom an FIR has been lodged by a Panchayat sachiv (secretary), whom the legislator had threatened to "beat with shoes" during a telephone call.
In the post, Yadav also shared a photograph of himself seated next to a wall adorned with portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and Babasaheb Ambedkar, beside a morphed image of Bhai Virendra charging with a shoe in hand.
The Hasanpur MLA asked his party, "Will the RJD act against its MLA Bhai Virendra, who made objectionable remarks against SCs and STs, even issued a death threat, in scant disregard for the ideals of Ambedkar."
"I was ousted from the party as a result of a conspiracy of Jaichands (traitors). Now it remains to be seen if action is taken against those indulging in hooliganism. Respect for the Constitution must be in action, not merely in speeches", added the 36-year-old, whose expulsion had followed a social media post in which he confessed to have been "in a relationship" with a woman.
Why was Tej Pratap expelled from RJD?
Tej Pratap is married to Aishwarya Roy, a granddaughter of former Chief Minister late Daroga Rai. Their divorce petition, filed in 2019, less than a year after their wedding, is pending before the court. Their marital strife also led to Roy's father Chandrika Roy, a former minister, to sever two decades-old ties with the RJD.
Meanwhile, a senior RJD leader who did not wish to be named, said Tej Pratap Yadav, by his latest outburst, "may have only further annoyed his father, besides his younger brother Tejashwi Yadav, who controls the party".
"Tej Pratap ended up playing into the hands of BJP by bringing up Ambedkar and Dalits", said the RJD leader, alluding to the charge by the saffron party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that Lalu Prasad had "insulted" Babasaheb by having the Dalit icon's photo placed at his feet.
The RJD leader added, "It is also well known that Bhai Virendra is a Tejashwi loyalist. Tej Pratap's boast of contesting from Mahua, which he represented earlier, has also unsettled Tejashwi, who is the MLA from adjoining Raghopur. The growing unpopularity of Tej Pratap in Mahua had led Tejashwi and Lalu to get him shifted to Hasanpur".
(With PTI inputs)
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