Patna: The JDU on Saturday hinted at a spilt in the RJD four days before a Ranchi court announces the quantum of punishment for Lalu Prasad in a fodder scam case.
Rajya Sabha member RCP Singh, who is also the JDU national general secretary, claimed there was distress in the RJD camp and its MLAs were looking at switching sides.
"Politics is all about possibilities," RCP, a close confidant of chief minister Nitish Kumar, said in reply to a question about RJD MLAs being in touch with the JDU. "It always happens. In any party, if allegations are levelled against the leader at the top, different thoughts emerge in the minds of the other leaders in the party. It is very obvious that leaders then start looking for an alternative."
The comment has come at a crucial stage when RJD chief Lalu is behind bars at the Birsa Munda Central Jail in Ranchi.
RCP, however, denied that he had any such information about the RJD leaders.
The RJD although equated the JDU leader's claim with making castles in the air. Former minister Alok Mehta said many JDU MLAs were in touch with the RJD and they could switch any time.
"I also believe that politics is all about possibilities and I am of the similar view that anything can happen in politics. So far as RCP's statement is concerned, I think he is building castles in the air because the RJD is intact and there is complete solidarity," Mehta said.
Another RJD MLA, Shakti Singh Yadav, also said the party was intact like a rock. "This is not the first time Lalu ji has gone to jail and our leaders and MLAs are intact because they have full faith in the ideology of the party and its leadership," he said.
Political observers say the JDU had earlier tried to engineer split in the RJD, like in 2014 when 13 RJD legislators had broken away under the leadership of Samrat Choudhary.
Then Speaker Uday Narayan Choudhary had issued the notification from the Assembly secretariat, recognising the breakaway faction as a separate group. Lalu had challenged it later, parading nine of its 13 MLAs.
RCP cited the collapse of the Grand Alliance government in Bihar to explain how politics changes. "As I said, politics is all about possibilities, you have the recent case of the Grand Alliance government - when corruption charges were levelled we had to change our partner. So such things are very common in politics," RCP, who celebrated his birthday on Saturday, said.