Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad’s second daughter Rohini Acharya launched her Lok Sabha poll campaign on Monday with a visit to the Hariharnath Temple at Sonepur in Bihar.
Lalu and his wife, former chief minister Rabri Devi, eldest daughter and Rajya Sabha member Misa Bharti, other members of her family and a few senior party leaders were present with Rohini.
The temple comes under the Saran parliamentary constituency from where Rohini will be filing her nomination papers for the polls scheduled on May 20.
She is pitted against BJP leader and four-term Lok Sabha member Rajiv Pratap Rudy and will start her public contact programme in the constituency from Tuesday.
“I have come to Saran and have taken the blessings of Baba Hariharnath. The people here will fully support me. They are ready to welcome a change this time,” Rohini told reporters.
Rohini has become the sixth member of the Lalu-Rabri family to enter politics. Her elder sister Misa is contesting from the Patliputra constituency for the third time, while brothers Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav are MLAs and former ministers.
Rohini is a doctor based in Singapore, while her husband Samresh Singh is a computer engineer and businessman. In 2022, Rohini donated one of her kidneys to her ailing father.
Although Rohini is foraying into politics for the first time, she has been active on social media for the past several years, defending her father and other members of the family and at times severely criticising their opponents.
Just before the fall of the Mahagathbandhan government in Bihar, she had attacked chief minister Nitish Kumar with a series of posts on X, causing a furore. Although she deleted them later, it proved the last nail in the coffin for the staggering government.
Lalu had hinted at her entry into politics by deploying her on the dais at the Jan Vishwas Rally in Patna on March 3. He had sought
blessings for her from the crowd though she did not address the meeting.
The Saran (the erstwhile Chhapra Lok Sabha seat) constituency was considered a bastion of the RJD. Lalu had represented it four times, getting elected for the first time in 1977 from Chhapra. However, the seat slipped out of the RJD’s hands after Rabri lost to Rudy in 2014. The party fielded Chandrika Rai, the estranged father-in-law of Lalu’s eldest son Tej Pratap in 2019, but he too lost to Rudy.
Asked by The Telegraph about the poll battle with Rohini, the incumbent MP Rudy pointed out that he has contested against Lalu and Rabri, and said: “I will not like to comment on a little girl who is entering politics for the first time”.
