Sadhu Yadav floats party for clean governance

With the election bells ringing in Bihar, there seems no dearth of new parties joining the political race.

The latest to jump on the poll bandwagon is former Lok Sabha MP Sadhu Yadav, better known as the estranged brother-in-law of Rashtriya Janata Dal president Lalu Prasad.

Sadhu formally announced his party Garib Janata Dal-Secular in Patna. “The people of Bihar want change in this election. Garib Janata Dal-Secular will be the alternative,” Sadhu affirmed.

Sadhu, who was known as a parallel power centre during the 15-year-long RJD regime in Bihar, said that Lalu and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had joined hands to halt the BJP’s march. “But I have not come to stop anybody. I have merely come to provide an alternative to the voters in Bihar who want change,” Sadhu added.

At the party’s first workers’-conference in Patna on Tuesday, Sadhu said his organisation would contest from all the 243 seats in the Assembly elections. On this occasion, Sadhu also announced some sops if his party came to power. “We will provide Rs 1 lakh to poor families for their daughters’ wedding,” he said.

Promising a clean government, Sadhu said that the people of the state wanted to get rid of Nitish and Lalu.

Declaring autorickshaw as his party’s symbol, Sadhu nominated former Rajya Sabha member Brahmadeo Anand Paswan as the party’s state president. Paswan, incidentally, had shot into limelight for writing a poetic hagiography, Lalu Chalisa, in honour of the RJD president.

Sadhu is the second Yadav leader, after Pappu Yadav, to float a new party. Pappu had recently formed the Jan Adhikar Morcha.

Both Sadhu and Pappu had earlier come out in open in support of former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi after his ouster by the Janata Dal-United. But they chose to form their parties rather than joining the Hindustani Awam Party floated by Manjhi. Both the leaders, however, have pledged their support to Manjhi.

Sadhu had fallen out with Lalu shortly before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls after being denied the RJD ticket from East Champaran. He had then joined the Congress to fight the general elections. Prior to the 2014 parliamentary polls, he had sung paeans of Narendra Modi. This, however, led to his expulsion from Congress.

Sadhu subsequently failed to join the BJP because of the protests by the party’s Bihar leaders such as Sushil Kumar Modi. Since then, Sadhu had been languishing in political wilderness.

Courtesy: Mail Today