'I Stood Behind You for 32 Yrs But No More': Jolt to RJD Before Polls as Lalu Confidant Raghuvansh Singh Quits

10-September-2020

In a jolt to the RJD ahead of the Bihar polls, senior party leader and former Union minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, a close confidant of Lalu Prasad, quit the party on Thursday.

Singh, who had been upset with the way the party affairs were being handled in Prasad�s absence, wrote a letter to the jailed RJD supremo from AIIMS in Delhi where he is admitted, apologising for his action.

"Since the death of Jannayak Karpoori Thakur, I stood behind you for 32 years, but not now," he wrote in his brief one-line resignation letter to Prasad, who is serving sentences in four fodder scam cases in Ranchi. In the footnote, he added," I got the affection of party leaders and workers, besides common people. Please forgive me." Thakur was a prominent socialist leader and former state chief minister.

Singh, admitted to AIIMS, New Delhi, because of post-COVID complications, had earlier announced his resignation in June but was persuaded by Prasad to stay back. Singh, who held several portfolios in the Manmohan Singh government, including that of rural development, was reportedly unhappy over the proposed induction of alleged mafia don and former Lok Janshakti Party MP from Vaishali Rama Singh into the RJD.

The senior party leader, a prominent Rajput face in the party who had piloted the Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme, had been miffed over being sidelined in the party�s organisational set-up and being denied a Rajya Sabha seat for some time.