Three decades behind Lalu, through times good and bad

Ram Kripal, 56, was the man always with Lalu in his best and worst days.

Until he shifted camps, Ram Kripal Yadav’s loyalty to Lalu Prasad was unflinching, their association going back more than 30 years when the former was a youth leader.

Ram Kripal, 56, was the man always with Lalu in his best and worst days, including when many had written Lalu off after the assembly election rout and the crossover of 19 RJD leaders to the Nitish Kumar camp. And after Lalu was convicted in the fodder scam, it was Ram Kripal who not only helped lift the party’s morale but also challenged anyone who thought if it was the end of the road for his leader.

There used to be another very close Lalu aide, Shyam Rajak, then in constant conflict with Ram Kripal for the leader’s attention, but now a minister in the Nitish Kumar government.

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“He knows me so well. How can he say now that he did not know my wishes?” Ram Kripal told The Indian Express. “I would often say in passing that I can leave my claims to the Pataliputra seat only for bhabhi (Rabri Devi).” Lalu gave the seat instead to his daughter Misa Bharati.

That will make the contest a battle of three Lalu candidates former and present. The current Pataliputra JD(U) MP, Ranjan Prasad Yadav, was Lalu’s friend in their childhood and used to be the second most powerful RJD leader. It means Misa contests against two “uncles”.

She said: “Ram Kripal uncle calls me his niece but showed no respect for my feelings. He did not have the courage to meet me when I visited his home. Now that he has gone his way, I am prepared for the battle.”

For his part, Ram Kripal said: “It was not about just one decision. I was sitting MP in 2004 but offered the seat to Laluji in 2009… I have not yet fully recovered from this shock.”

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He and Lalu came together in the early 1980s after Ram Kripal had been made vice-president of the Yuva Lok Dal. “As a student leader I used to look up to Lalu (then a new MP, from the Janata Party) because his politics was not conventional,” says Ram Kripal, who became Patna’s deputy mayor in 1985 and contested his first assembly election from West Patna in 1990, and lost.

It was when Lalu took over as Bihar chief minister in 1990, now as a Janata Dal leader, that Kripal grew under his patronage. He became a member of the Bihar Legislative Council in 1992. In 1993, he won a byelection to the Patna Lok Sabha seat and represented the seat again in 1997 and 2004, as a key Lalu man. In 2009, when he surrendered the Pataliputra seat (renamed after delimitation) to Lalu, he lost to his one-time friend Ranjan Prasad, whom he faces again.

The real test of loyalty came in 2009-10 when the RJD won only four Lok Sabha seats and 22 in an assembly of 243. He stayed put while a number of his RJD colleagues joined the JD(U) and became ministers (Rajak, Bhim Singh and Ramai Ram). After last year’s conviction of Lalu, a TV reporter asked him if it was “political sunset” for Lalu. Ram Kripal said, “Laluji will rise like a Phoenix.”

Ram Kripal is surprised that RJD leaders call him an “outsider” for Pataliputra. He said he has a house in Naubatpur and remains in contact with the people.

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He said it was a difficult choice between the BJP and the JD(U), which too is said to have been planning a “good package” for him. “I will say all I have to on Wednesday. I will take questions on everything, including any on my secular credentials,” he said.

About the gains Ram Kripal brings to the BJP, Sushil Kumar Modi said: “We could not have got a better candidate from Pataliputra than Ram Kripal, a grassroots leader. He has had the image of a key Lalu man. We will have a great psychological advantage in the battle of uncle and niece.”