Patna: Lalu Prasad and Rabri Devi's residence, 10 Circular Road, wore a deserted look on Thursday with the RJD first couple and their younger son, Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, out of town to fight legal battles.
Most RJD leaders have either gone to Ranchi or New Delhi for Lalu and Tejashwi, respectively.
After Lalu, who surrendered in a lower court in Ranchi on Thursday, now it's the turn of Tejashwi and Rabri, who have to appear before the Patiala House Courts on Friday in a railway tender case in which the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a chargesheet against them.
RJD leaders, however, claimed that the Lalu family was bold enough to face such situation and everyone will come out clean. "It is not the first time that Lalu ji has gone to jail and his family members are facing similar predicament. Such situations have arisen in the past too but the RJD still functions properly even today," RJD national vice president Shivanand Tiwari told The Telegraph over phone from Ranchi.
It is fact that the RJD has become used to as far as surviving without Lalu is concerned and it was visible during the bypoll of two Assembly seats Jehanabad and Bhabhua and the Lok Sabha seat of Araria in March this year.
Though the RJD leaders are not admitting publicly, the buzz in the corridors of the party is that the RJD may face trouble if both Lalu and Tejashwi go behind the bars. Except Tej Pratap, most of Lalu's family members who are into politics are facing legal battles, including Misa Bharti.
"We are not sure when Lalu ji will come out of jail but what about Tejashwi Yadav, who is virtually the new boss of the party? He too is facing legal battles. If anything goes wrong with Tejashwi, then it would really be an ugly situation in the RJD because Tej Pratap is a good for nothing and no RJD worker will act on his instructions. However, we hope that Tejashwi comes out clean as he has to play a long innings in politics," a senior RJD leader and former minister in Nitish's cabinet told The Telegraph, requesting anonymity for obvious reasons.
Speculations made about the RJD's future might have had something to do with the removal of the piece of black cloth tied to the front gate in the afternoon after Lalu surrendered in court.
Family insiders said the black cloth was removed on the instructions of Rabri Devi, who called up her people in Patna. "The cloth was removed because it had become the talk of the town and was not sending a good message to RJD supporters. It was also because the media was cooking up their own stories. It has been removed so that none can speculate about it any more," said a family member at 10 Circular Road.
On the other hand, RJD national vice-president and former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said nothing would happen to Lalu family though they have been implicated by the Narendra Modi government.
