Patna: Wily Indian politician Lalu Prasad Yadav is currently caught in possibly the worst crisis of his four decade-long political career.

The man who at one time used to dictate terms when it came to political developments in his state Bihar now faces a mutiny within his own party — the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), of which he is the national president — as well as his family, over his decision to extend support to the Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar against Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, who has been asked to prove his majority on the floor of the House on February 20.

Significantly, Manjhi hails from an underprivileged social section and the core vote base of the RJD consists of such sections. This is the primary factor behind the resentment brewing in the RJD against Lalu’s decision.

RJD parliamentarian from Madhepura, Rajesh Ranjan, who is popularly known as Pappu Yadav, has raised a banner of revolt against his mentor Lalu for his move to lend support to Kumar amid the power struggle within the JD-U. Pappu Yadav, who won defeating JD-U president Sharad Yadav in the parliamentary elections, has called on the RJD chief to reconsider his decision, saying the move could push the state into “home war”, a euphemism for caste riots that remained a perpetual feature of Bihar during 15 years of RJD rule. He also termed the concept of the “grand alliance” between the RJD, JD-U and the Congress as a coalition of “sycophants” who had come together for personal gains. He warned the party’s boat was bound to sink if his appeal went unheeded.

“I am trying to reinforce the fact that the RJD has always stood for social justice and should not play a role in dislodging Manjhi, who belongs to a Dalit [marginalised social strata] family,” Pappu Yadav, who is one of the four parliamentarians elected on the RJD ticket warned on Monday, asking what support base the party would be left with if Dalit voters parted ways with it. He added that the RJD’s decision to vote against Manjhi would badly dent the party’s image of being an organisation committed to the marginalised sections of society.

Pappu Yadav also appealed to state lawmakers of his party to listen to their “inner voice” and vote for the Manjhi government, declaring that he was ready to make any sacrifice in his fight for the poor.

For the past two days, Pappu Yadav has been holding rallies in eastern and north-eastern parts of the state appealing to party lawmakers to come to the aid of Manjhi.

Yadav also launched a scathing attack on Lalu’s son Tejashwi Yadav for asking party supporters to abide by the party decision. “There is no leader in the RJD other than Lalu Prasad, and I’m the true inheritor of his social justice politics, not his son. A son/daughter can’t claim to be the party leaders just because they are children of Lalu Prasad,” Yadav said, adding that he got elected owing to his personal appeal. “Why did the RJD lose on remaining 36 Lok Sabha seats if it had the support of the masses?” he asked.

Both Lalu’s wife and daughter suffered losses in the last Lok Sabha polls, leaving his family without any representation in either of the two Houses of parliament.

Pappu Yadav’s emotional appeals appear to be slowly working, with two RJD lawmakers in the Bihar assembly — Dinesh Kumar Singh and Raghvendra Singh — announcing their support for Manjhi in defiance of their party’s stand while another lawmaker, Surendra Praasd Yadav, from the chief minister’s home district of Gaya too is said to be against dislodging Manjhi.

In another twist to the power struggle, Sadhu Yadav, Lalu’s brother-in-law, has also questioned his decision to support Kumar against Manjhi. He wondered how Lalu could extend support to an individual who had broken away from him in 1994 to form the Samata Party and then launched a sustained campaign against him over the next 20 years, which saw the RJD fall from its heyday with Lalu himself sent to jail repeatedly in the multi-million-dollar fodder scam case. Lalu currently stands disqualified from contesting any election over a decade for his conviction in the fodder scam case.

“Anyone in one’s proper senses would not have thought of supporting the leader who had for long been conspiring against him [Lalu] and the RJD. Also, Yadavs [main vote base of the RJD] have been the prime targets during nine-year rule of Nitish Kumar. Thus, supporting Nitish Kumar would mean digging his own grave,” Sadhu Yadav said.

He also questioned his brother-in-law’s “secular” logic behind supporting Kumar, saying, “If Manjhi is to be branded ‘communal’ as he is hoping to get the backing of the BJP to sail through the floor test, it ought to be remembered that Nitish only recently ended his 17 year-old association with the BJP to be in power”.