As former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav will be completing half of his jail sentence in the Dumka treasury case on November 9, the Rashtriya Janata Dal pinned its hope that the party patriarch will be coming out of the jail on November 10 — the same day the counting of votes for Bihar Assembly election 2020 will take place. Dashing the hopes, the Jharkhand high court has deferred the hearing to November 27.
This is the first election in the last 40 years in Bihar that Lalu Prasad Yadav was missing from the election campaign, though attacks on him were abound during the campaigning as The JD(U)-NDA alliance blamed Lalu Prasad’s tenure for Bihar’s ‘Jungle Raj’.
Since he was elected an MP for the first time in 1977, he has been prominently present in all elections. Hence, the party was hoping that he will be out on the day the results will be announced.
The former Bihar chief minister is serving prison term in various cases related to fodder scam. In two cases — Deoghar treasure and Chaibasa treasury — he has been granted bail. While in the Deogarh treasury case, he got bail in 2019, in the Chaibasa case, he was granted bail on October 9, this year.
The RJD patriarch has been in jail since January 2018 and has completed half of his sentence in many cases.
Though away from the election heat and dust, Lalu is closely following the election updates as stakes are high on Mahagathbandhan being led by his son Tejashwi Yadav. At present, Lalu is under treatment at Jharkhand’s Rajendra Institute of Medical Sciences.