Former railway minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav (67) was elected as president of his party Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) for the ninth consecutive term. He has been elected for the period of 3 years.
- The RJD won 80 of the 243 seats in the Bihar assembly to emerge as the single-largest party after the November 2015 polls.
- RJD is aimed to end the “misrule” of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre.
About Lalu Prasad Yadav:
1948 born Lalu Prasad Yadav is a politician from Bihar was the former Minister of Railways from 2004 to 2009 with United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
- He served as the Chief Minister of Bihar from 1990 to 1997.
- His younger son Tejashwi Yadav (26) currently serves as the 4th Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar is the youngest to hold Bihar deputy chief minister ship.
Criticism against him:
His tenure as CM of Bihar has been criticized for lawlessness and has been termed as the Jungle Raj & encourager of criminality and “Gunda Raj”. There are several corruption cases against him.
- He has been criticized for promoting and encouraging caste-based politics
- On 3 October 2013, he was sentenced to 5 years of imprisonment and ₹25 lakh fine for his role in the “Fodder Scam”*.
- He used Osama bin Laden’s look-alike while campaigning for Bihar elections in 2005 and was criticized by saying “glorifying the name of a man who is recognized as the most wanted terrorist in the world”.
Biography:
The Making of Laloo Yadav, The Unmaking of Bihar authored by Sankarshan Thakur. It was later updated by PicadorIndia under the title “Subaltern Sahib: Bihar and the Making of Laloo Yadav”
*About Fodder scam:
The Fodder Scam was a corruption scandal that involved the embezzlement of about ₹25 billion from the government treasury of the eastern Indian state of Bihar.