Sharad Yadav passes away: Know all about socialist leader who wanted to bring opposition together

Former Union Minister Sharad Yadav passed away, confirmed his daughter through a Facebook post. He was 75 years old.

The veteran socialist leader has started his efforts to bring the opposition parties together in India. In 2022, after meeting Rahul Gandhi, he had said that the opposition parties that are against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the RSS should come together.

As an effort to bring various offshoots of the erstwhile Janata Dal together, he even merged his party LJP with Lalu Prasad Yadav's RJD. 

All you need to know about Bihar's veteran politician

Sharad Yadav was seven times a member of Lok Sabha and thrice elected to Rajya Sabha. He represented the Madhepura constituency of Mandal Commission fame, B P Mandal in 1991, 96, 99 and 2009. He was once defeated by Lalu Prasad Yadav in 2004 and in 2014 by Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav. He represented constituencies in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh too.

In 1997 due to a contest between Lalu Prasad and Sharad in the elections for Janata Dal president, Sharad was ousted from the party and Lalu formed RJD. Janata Dal merged with Samta Party floated by Nitish Kumar and Sharad became the first president of JDU.

Following differences with Nitish Kumar over JDU joining hands with the BJP in 2018, Sharad was expelled from JDU when Nitish Kumar took over the president and Sharad formed a new party-LJD.

Nitish got him disqualified under the anti-defection law which Sharad challenged in the Supreme Court, which allowed Sharad to retain his Tughlak Road bungalow till disposal of the petition.

In the 2020 assembly elections, his party entered into an electoral alliance with the Congress party and his only daughter, Subhasini Raj Rao unsuccessfully contested the elections as Congress candidate from Madhepura.

Later, Sharad Yadav parted ways with Nitish Kumar and founded his own party, the Loktantarik Janata Dal (LJD) in 2018.

In March 2022, Yadav announced that the LJD will merge with the Rashtriya Janata Dal as part of his efforts to unite various offshoots of the erstwhile Janata Dal. It marked Yadav's coming together with Lalu Prasad after more than three decades.