A day after the RJD suffered a heavy defeat in the Bihar assembly elections, party president Lalu Prasad’s daughter Rohini Acharya on Saturday declared that she was “quitting politics” and cutting off ties with her family.
Acharya, a doctor who chose to become a homemaker after settling abroad with her Singapore-based husband, posted the announcement in a cryptic message on her X account.
“I am quitting politics and I am disowning my family…This is what Sanjay Yadav and Rameez had asked me to do…and I am taking all the blame," she wrote.
Sanjay Yadav, a Rajya Sabha MP from the RJD, is among Tejashwi Yadav’s closest aides, while Rameez is known to be an old friend of Tejashwi’s, belonging to a political family from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh.
Acharya’s post did not clarify what the two had said to her, and both were unavailable for comment.
Acharya, who garnered attention in recent years for donating a kidney to her father, had contested the Saran Lok Sabha seat last year but lost. There had been speculation that she was “unhappy” over the expulsion of Tej Pratap Yadav, Lalu Prasad’s elder son, from the party. However, she actively campaigned for Tejashwi during the assembly polls.
The RJD’s tally plunged to 24 seats from its previous 75 in the Bihar assembly elections.
On Friday, the ruling NDA routed the Mahagathbandhan to retain power in Bihar, reaffirming Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s staying power, and delivering a major blow to the Congress and ally RJD.
The scale of the National Democratic Alliance’s victory was evident in the near 85 per cent strike rate achieved by its main partners, the BJP and JD(U), across the 101 seats each contested.
With a decisive “200 paar” mandate, the NDA secured a three-fourths majority in the 243-member assembly, with the BJP emerging as the single largest party.