Veteran Samajwadi leader Sharad Yadav was suffering from kidney related problems for a long time.
New Delhi:
Sharad Yadav was a prominent socialist leader who rose on the anti-Congress plank of the 70s and remained a prominent opposition presence for decades as he traveled through various branches of the Lok Dal and Janata Party before succumbing to low political equity and poor health. Of. Marginalized in his last few years.
The veteran leader breathed his last on Thursday at a private hospital in Gurugram, where he was taken after he collapsed at his Chhatarpur residence in Delhi.
The veteran socialist leader had been suffering from kidney-related problems for a long time and used to undergo dialysis regularly.
Then a young student leader, it was his victory in the 1974 Lok Sabha by-election from Jabalpur as the opposition candidate against the Congress that solidified his political fight against the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
The Emergency was soon imposed in 1975 and he won again in 1977, establishing his credentials as one of the many leaders to emerge from the anti-Emergency movement, an image that would endear him to many decades of being a parliamentarian. Kept in good condition throughout. The better part of the last nearly five decades.
Sharad Yadav served as a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in the late 90s. He was a minister in the VP Singh government in 1989, and his support to Lalu Prasad Yadav was considered crucial when he became the Chief Minister of Bihar for the first time in 1990.
Both were to be ousted soon as Bihar leaders dominated politics in their state, towering over others and ensuring that it was their authority that prevailed.
Apart from the current Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Sharad Yadav, the late Dalit leader Ram Vilas Paswan were the three prominent socialist leaders from the state who carved their own paths to combat the charismatic friend-foe.
While Sharad Yadav was born in Madhya Pradesh and started his political career from there, Bihar became his ‘karmabhoomi’.
He and Lalu Prasad Yadav faced off in the Lok Sabha elections and his victory over the Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo in 1999 was a high point in his career.
His association with Kumar and his alliance with the BJP ended the 15-year-long joint rule of Lalu Prasad Yadav and his wife Rabri Devi, who took over as chief minister after being embroiled in corruption cases.
Never a leader with a large base of his own, Sharad Yadav relied on state heavyweights like Lalu and Nitish to enter Parliament, but enjoyed the aura and political weight that put him on the higher side of national politics in Delhi. made a strong presence.
He was the convenor of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance before reluctantly quitting after Mr Kumar decided to break ties with the saffron party in 2013.
He was instrumental in forging an alliance with Mr Kumar’s arch-rival Lalu Prasad Yadav as they joined hands to defeat the BJP in the 2015 assembly elections in Bihar.
Ironically, Nitish Kumar’s decision to join hands with the BJP again in 2017 broke his patience with them as he decided to remain in the opposition camp and floated the democratic Janata Dal with some of his supporters.
However, the new party never took off and his poor health nearly put an end to his active politics. He merged his party with RJD in 2022.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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