Chandrika Rai is a former RJD leader running for Bihar 2020 elections as a JDU candidate
Patna / New Delhi:
Former Bihar minister and six-time provincial deputy Chandrika Rai – once confidant of RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav and whose daughter Aishwarya is married to her son, Tej Pratap Yadav – will run for the Assembly from his stronghold of Parsa in the Saran district.
Mr Rai, 62, however, will not do so on the RJD ticket he won in 2015. Instead, he joined Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JDU, whose campaign was strewn with beatings. late former chief minister Lalu Yadav and his son Tejashwi Yadav – the main ministerial face of the opposition alliance.
Son of Daroga Prasad Rai, head of Congress and former chief minister, Mr. Rai won the Parsa seat five times between 1985 and the February 2005 elections, resulting in a fractured verdict. He was eliminated in repeated polls months later; JDU’s Chhotela Rai won by less than 5,000 votes.
This loss appeared to be a brief setback, however, as he returned to retake the seat in the 2015 election.
The fight for Parsa’s seat this time around also sees Chhotela Rai in the fray, after he has gone the other way – swapping the JDU for the RJD. Eight other candidates are also in contention but the winner, barring a truly unexpected turn of events, is likely to be one of the two Mr. Rais.
In August, when Chandrika Rai joined the JDU, he warned Lalu Yadav’s sons that there were “no safe seats for them in the state”. Claiming then to know in which constituencies Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav would fight in this election, Mr. Rai mocked them for choosing “safe seats”.
“It is surprising that the two brothers are looking for safe seats while they are the sons of Lalu Prasad … and make big declarations of a return to power,” he said.
Former RJD leader Chandrika Rai joined Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JDU in August
Mr Rai also took a look at his old party when leaving, saying that “the way things are done in the party is beyond me” and that he had “always been an admirer of Nitish Kumar’s work” .
A few days later, Tej Pratap fought back and said the JDU “would not gain if Chandrika Rai joined their party”.
Two years ago, the relationship between the Rais and the Yadav, two of Bihar’s most influential political families, appeared to have only been strengthened by the marriage of Mr. Rai’s daughter, Aishwarya, to Tej Pratap Yadav.
Six months later, however, Mr Yadav filed for divorce for “incompatibility” – the case is before the courts – and caused a dramatic severance in family ties. So much so, in fact, that Mr. Rai refused to accept his daughter’s belongings when they were kicked out from the Yadav’s home.
There were rumors that Aishwarya Rai could join her father in the ranks of the JDU and make his electoral debut in this election – in a dramatic competition against Tej Pratap Yadav for the seat of Hasanpur – but that now seems unlikely.
The rift between the two families widened in April after Tej Pratap had a tantrum after Mr. Rai received a ticket to challenge Lok Sabha’s polls from the Saran siege – the seat won by Lalu Yadav in his last election before being convicted in a fodder scam case.
The Parsa constituency votes in the second phase of elections in Bihar – November 3. The result will be announced on November 10.
