The Rashtriya Janata Dal on Thursday sacked its senior Bihar leader Gulab Yadav who has fielded his wife as a rebel candidate in the upcoming state legislative council elections.
A communication issued by the party's national general secretary Bhola Yadav said Yadav was being expelled for six years in recommendations of state president Jagadanand Singh and principal national general secretary Abdul Bari Siddiqui.
Gulab Yadav had announced a couple of weeks ago that his wife Ambika will be contesting from Madhubani as an independent candidate, accusing RJD supremo Lalu Prasad and heir apparent Tejashwi Yadav of “betrayal”.
Mr Yadav had claimed that the party gave ticket to a “weak” candidate Meraj Alam, as part of a “deal” with the NDA, after having assured him that he will be considered for Madhubani, which is among the 24 seats going to polls.
The seat was previously held by BJP's Santosh Kumar, whose term had expired in July last year. Elections to the 24 seats, of local authorities constituencies, had been deferred because of delay in Panchayat elections which was caused by the COVID upsurge.
As per the schedule announced by the Election Commission, filing of nominations will begin from March 9 and voting will take place on April 4, followed by counting of votes three days later.
Gulab Yadav had wrested Jhajharpur assembly seat for the RJD in 2015, from BJP's Nitish Mishra, to whom he lost it again five years later. He also contested, unsuccessfully, as the party candidate from Jhanjharpur in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
Election For 5 Bihar Legislative Council Seats On March 31 Lalu Yadav's Party Announces Candidates For 3 Bihar Council Seats Bihar Legislative Council Polls On April 4, Counting Of Votes On April 7 Windows Computers Lead To 'Blue Screen Of Death' Due To CrowdStrike Error In 1st Statement After Outage, CrowdStrike CEO Says... Massive Worldwide Microsoft Outage: Flights, Markets, Stock Exchange Down Law Will Take Its Course: Puja Khedkar Breaks Silence On Allegations "Atmanirbharta" Cannot Be At Cost Of Nation's Defence: Air Force Vice Chief CrowdStrike CEO Says "Deeply Sorry" For Tech Outage: Report Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world.