'Internal family matter': Lalu Yadav breaks silence after Rohini Acharya's outburst

Lalu Yadav

Two days after internal dissension within the Yadav family came out in public, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav urged people and party workers to focus on party unity and improving the party’s performance, and not the internal tussle within the party’s first family.

“This is an internal family matter and will be resolved within the family. I am there to deal with it,” Lalu Prasad said at a meeting of party legislators in Patna that unanimously selected younger son Tejashwi Yadav as the leader of the RJD legislative party.

Rohini Acharya, Lalu Yadav's daughter claimed on Saturday Tejashwi Yadav and his close aide RJD MP Sanjay Yadav threw her out of the family, following which Acharya announced her decision to "quit politics" and "disown" her family. She alleged that she was "disgraced, abused, and even hit" when she questioned Sanjay Yadav for the party's defeat.

“Yesterday, a daughter, a sister, a married woman, a mother was humiliated, filthy abuses were hurled at her, a slipper was raised to hit her. I did not compromise on my self-respect, I did not surrender the truth, and solely because of this, I had to endure this insult…Yesterday, a daughter, out of compulsion, left behind her crying parents and sisters and came away; they tore me away from my maternal home… They left me orphaned…May none of you ever walk my path, may no family ever have a daughter-sister like Rohini,” she said in a post on X.

Rohini, who donated a kidney to her father in 2022, said she was subjected to “filthy abuses” during a confrontation involving two of Tejashwi Yadav’s closest aides — RJD Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Yadav and long-time associate Rameez. She accused them of maligning her by claiming she had “taken crores” from the family after the kidney donation, calling it an “insult beyond forgiveness”.

The tension within the family first became apparent during the Bihar Adhikar Yatra in the run-up to the elections, when Rohini Acharya objected to Tejashwi’s advisor, Sanjay Yadav, sitting in the front seat beside him. This grew into broader complaints of interference by Sanjay Yadav and aide Rameez Nemat Khan in family and party matters.

After the election results came in, Rohini put out an emotional post to announce her decision to quit politics on November 15. She later also claimed that she was “humiliated, filthy abuses were hurled at her, and a slipper was raised to hit her”.

RJD suffered poorly in Bihar assembly polls as the party got just 25 seats, despite contesting on more than 140 seats in the 243-member state assembly.