New Delhi: Former Union Minister and veteran socialist leader of Bihar Sharad Yadav passed away on Thursday evening at the age of 75 after a prolonged illness. The veteran leader breathed his last at Fortis Hospital in Gurugram, where he was taken after he collapsed at his residence in Delhi. Sharad Yadav had been suffering from kidney-related problems for a long time and used to undergo dialysis regularly.
Subhashini Yadav, daughter of a veteran politician from Bihar, was present at the time of his last breath. He confirmed his father’s demise on social media. “Papa is no more,” she wrote in a Facebook post. Sharad Yadav was ill for a long time and was undergoing treatment at Fortis Hospital in Gurugram.
Father is no more — Subhashini Sharad Yadav (@Subhashini_12b) January 12, 2023
Sharad Yadav was a prominent socialist leader who rose on the anti-Congress plank of the 1970s and remained an important presence in national politics for decades, as he sought to reduce political equity and poor health through various branches of the Lok Dal and the Janata Party. traveled before. Push him to the fringes in his last few years.
Then a young student leader, it was his victory in the 1974 Lok Sabha by-election from Jabalpur as the opposition candidate against the Congress that solidified his political fight against the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The Emergency was soon imposed in 1975 and he won again in 1977, establishing his credentials as one of the many leaders to emerge from the anti-Emergency movement, an image that held him in good stead for decades. Because he remained an MP. The better part of the last nearly five decades.
Yadav served as a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in the late 1990s. He was a minister in the VP Singh government in 1989, and his support to Lalu Prasad Yadav was considered crucial when he became the Chief Minister of Bihar for the first time in 1990.
Both were to be ousted soon as Bihar leaders dominated politics in their state, towering over others and ensuring that it was their authority that prevailed. Apart from the current Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav, the late Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan were the three prominent socialist leaders from the state who carved their own paths to combat the charismatic friend-foe.
While Sharad Yadav was born in Madhya Pradesh and started his political career from there, Bihar became his ‘karmabhoomi’. He and Lalu Prasad Yadav faced off in the Lok Sabha elections and his victory over the Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo in 1999 was a high point in his career.
His association with Kumar and his alliance with the BJP ended the 15-year-long joint rule of Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi, who took over as chief minister after being embroiled in corruption cases.
Never a leader with a large base of his own, Sharad Yadav relied on state heavyweights like Lalu and Nitish to enter Parliament, but enjoyed the aura and political weight that put him on the higher side of national politics in Delhi. made a strong presence.
He was reluctantly quit in 2013 after Kumar decided to break ties with the saffron party, before which he was the convenor of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. He was instrumental in Kumar’s alliance with arch-rival Lalu Prasad Yadav as they joined hands to dismantle the alliance. BJP in 2015 Bihar assembly elections
Ironically, Kumar’s decision to join hands with the BJP again in 2017 broke his patience with them as he decided to remain in the opposition camp and supported some of his supporters to float the democratic Janata Dal.
However, the new party never took off and his poor health nearly put an end to his active politics. He merged his party with RJD in 2022.
(with agency inputs)