Rajniti Prasad on Thursday night. (PTI)

Patna, Dec. 30: To those with an eye for symbolism, it might seem apt that the man who appeared to be scattering the ashes of the Lokpal bill in Parliament last night is named Rajniti.

Many TV viewers watched Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) member Rajniti Prasad, 62, rush to the well of the Rajya Sabha, snatch a sheaf of bill papers and tear them minutes before the House was adjourned at midnight.

It wasn’t Rajniti’s antics that consigned the anti-graft legislation to the freezer — that happened shortly afterwards when chaos during minister V. Narayanasamy’s speech, which the Opposition suspected to be filibustering, set off a chain of events leading to the House being adjourned sine die.

As a symbolic act, though, Rajniti’s capers could hardly be bettered. But then, some might argue, the small-time lawyer-turned-MP’s entire political career has been emblematic of a brand of rajniti (politics) the country has long been used to seeing.

“He (Rajniti) has been a synonym for disorder and chaos throughout his long political career,” said Bihar deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi who, as a BJP leader, is a staunch adversary of Rajniti’s party.

“He seldom speaks logically. He prefers to make a statement through his hands and feet rather than his vocal cords. It has always been hard to decipher what he says, for he seldom speaks in a structured manner,” Modi, a political veteran of three decades, said.

To many observers, though, Rajniti is among the last representatives of the Lalu Prasad style of “hungama (rabble-rousing)” politics, a breed that appears to be dying out at least for now with the current decline in the RJD chief’s political fortunes. “My father had given me that name. He wasn’t a politician — he ran a small business — but the name he gave me aroused my interest in politics,” Rajniti told The Telegraph today.

“After I grew up, I retained this name through school and college. I love my name as much as I love healthy and meaningful politics.”

Like many others, Rajniti owes his rise to his unstinting loyalty to Lalu Prasad, whom he described as his “Bhagwan (God)” after being elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2006.

The Munger native from a backward Baniya (trader) family had taken his first lessons in politics from Madhu Limaye, the socialist ideologue and noted parliamentarian whom he still calls his “political guru and mentor”. He joined the Yuvjan Sabha, the youth wing of the Socialist Party, in the 1960s and is said to have caught Limaye’s eye.Youthful enthusiasm over, Rajniti settled down to practise law in Patna’s lower courts — without much success, though. But in the late 1990s, the legal profession offered him the opportunity to get close to Lalu Prasad at a time the RJD boss was battling fodder scam cases.

During Lalu Prasad’s several court appearances to surrender or attend hearings, Rajniti was a constant companion by his side even as leading defence lawyers hired at hefty fees continued to fight the RJD chief’s case.

Lalu Prasad, called the “Raja of Bihar” in his prime, sent Rajniti to the Rajya Sabha five years ago, showering on him the same largesse he had bestowed on obscure “poet” Brahmadeo Paswan, the writer of the Lalu Chaleesa (paeans), in the 1990s.

Yesterday, Rajniti was only repaying his master, who has been one of the few political leaders to dare voice his opposition to the idea of Lokpal.

RJD members Ramkripal Yadav, Prem Gupta and Jabir Hussein had strongly opposed the bill in the Upper House yesterday. “But it was Rajniti who implemented the dictation of his leader in letter and spirit,” a party worker said.

Rajniti refused to speak about last night’s incident. “You saw and heard what I did in the House. I will not speak on that. We are opposed to the Lokpal, that’s all,” he told this newspaper.

To be fair to him, Rajniti is not the first man from his party to have shred official documents in Parliament.

It was RJD member Subhas Yadav --- a brother-in-law of Lalu Prasad --- who had torn the women’s quota bill, scattering the pieces on the face of the Chair in the previous Rajya Sabha. Earlier, party colleague Surendra Yadav had ripped the women’s bill papers in the Lok Sabha.

Surendra and Subhas are no longer members of any of the Houses, though. Rajniti’s term too ends in 2012 when, bereft of numbers in the Bihar Assembly, his boss will find it difficult to send him or someone of his ilk to the Upper House.