“The party is slowly going to pieces but he does not seem to have summoned the resolve or the mindspace yet to do anything about it,” said a Lalu associate kindly of his leader. “This denial is suicidal.”

Another prominent colleague took a harsher view. “If he continues to ignore and evade realities, Lalu will soon head the way of the likes of Jagannath Mishra,” said former MP Vijay Krishna, who quit the JD(U) to join Lalu just before last year’s Bihar polls.

Mishra, a former chief minister, is a politician who is as well-ignored today as he is well known. “There will always be people to recognise Lalu,” Vijay Krishna added. “But few to follow him.” He was speaking to partymen at a small conclave on ways to revive the RJD’s sunken fortunes last week. Lalu, again, gave the session a go.

Shortly after his second defeat at the hands of Nitish Kumar last November, Lalu Prasad had declared a six-month moratorium on agitational activity in the name of introspection and giving the government a fair chance to govern. That period has lapsed and RJD cadres are getting restive about where the party is headed; many of them are keen to jump ship and join the JD(U).

Common reckoning in the RJD is that Lalu Prasad is not prepared to “confront realities” at least for the moment. Apart from disgruntlement on the fringes — Nawal Kishore Rai is by no means significant in the RJD pecking order — Lalu faces fracture at the very top. The RJD’s most prominent MP after him and former Union rural development minister, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, has been openly critical of the manner in which Lalu Prasad runs the party. For several months now he has refused to ascend the party dais and remained lukewarm during the Assembly elections even though Lalu was fighting with his back to the wall. In fact, there has been persistent speculation that Raghuvansh Prasad might be wooed into the Congress. Lalu, on his part, has made no visible effort to mollify him.