Patna: The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has expelled a senior and dedicated party leader, Jageshwar Rai, for six years from the party after he opposed the candidature of party chief Lalu Prasad’s son from a seat he had been nursing for long.

The development could prove to be a major setback for the party, which is battling hard to regain its lost ground in the company of chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JD-U).

Rai, who has been associated with the RJD for the past 25 years, was shown the door on Sunday shortly after he led a crowd of his supporters to stage a forceful demonstration in front of Prasad’s bungalow in Patna, which was taken as an open challenge to the party.

Last month, Rai had strongly opposed his party chief’s move to field his eldest son Tej Pratap from his pet seat during a launching ceremony.

The reason behind this discord is the Yadav-dominated Muhua assembly seat in Vaishali district which Rai had been nursing for too long but now Prasad’s eldest son has staked claim over it finding it a safe one.

Pratap will be taking a plunge into electoral politics for the first time in the upcoming assembly polls due later this year after his father was disqualified from contesting elections, following his conviction in the multimillion dollar fodder scam by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court.

Rai said he had a genuine claim over this seat since had been grooming it for long.

Also, he had contested the seat on the RJD’s ticket in the last 2010 assembly elections although he lost by a narrow margin of a little more than 2,000 votes. An influential Yadav leader and educationist, Rai, who runs a string of reputed English medium schools, claims to have a good following in his constituency.

“I was shown the door as Lalu Prasad does not like to see rise of his caste men in politics, rather he loves the company of flatterers,” alleged Rai adding the RJD was not a party but a factory of “Lalu’s pet people”.

He said he would hold a massive rally in his constituency to “apprise” the voters how the party treats the loyal and dedicated workers.

This is the third expulsion of influential Yadav leaders from the RJD after they challenged the might of Prasad and questioned his family-centric politics.

Earlier in May, the RJD expelled parliamentarian Pappu Yadav from the party for six years when he resisted Prasad’s move to hand over the reins of his party to his children and claimed he was the real successor of the party chief.

Yadav has now formed his Jan Adhikar Party to take on the RJD in the upcoming elections. Also, he has described Prasad as the biggest enemy of Yadavs and appealed to the fellow caste men to denounce him.

Last year, the RJD expelled another parliamentarian, Ram Kripal Yadav, after he opposed the candidature of RJD chief’s eldest daughter Misa Bharti from Patliputra Lok Sabha seat, which he himself wanted to contest.

Kripal Yadav switched over to the BJP and won the seat in a close contest. He is now a federal minister in the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance government at the centre.