Lalu Prasad Yadav: News

Lalu Prasad Yadav is a former Chief Minister of Bihar and the President of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) as of 2021. An active student leader, Yadav started his political career as a vocal critic of the Indira Gandhi government. As part of the Janata Party, he won his first Lok Sabha seat in 1977. Yadav was subsequently elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly in 1980 and 1985. Later, he became the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly in 1989—as part of Janata Dal. Yadav then became Bihar’s Chief Minister in 1990. However, in July 1997, he formed his party, RJD, and in the same month, he was convicted and arrested in the 1996 fodder scam. Yadav was let out on bail in December 1997, and in 2004, he once again contested the Lok Sabha poll successfully. He was appointed the Union Railways Minister, a post he fulfilled with aplomb (2004-09). However, a fresh series of fodder scam-related criminal cases against him in 2012 led to his final downfall, and Yadav had been in and out of jail since. Post his conviction in 2018 in a third fodder scam-related case, Yadav was finally let out of jail in April 2021 on bail.