Rejecting Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad’s elder son Tej Pratap’s candidate, the party on Saturday announced the name of Syed Faisal Ali as its candidate for Sheohar Lok Sabha seat.
Faisal, a former staff member of Saudi Gazette, a newspaper published in Saudi Arabia, hails from Gaya. He had later joined Rashtriya Sahara Urdu group and then a pro-Muslim TV channel.
Faisal has close political links to several politicians, including Lalu Prasad and Congress’s Ahmad Patel.
Rama Devi, wife of former RJD minister Brij Behari Prasad, is the sitting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Sheohar. BJP has nominated Rama from Sheohar Lok Sabha seat again.
Former Vaishali MP Lovely Anand, who had joined Congress in January this year in a hope of getting party ticket from Sheohar, has announced to contest as an independent candidate after the seat went to RJD under the seat-sharing formula of Opposition Alliance. Sheohar was earlier represented by her husband Anand Mohan twice.
Faisal’s nomination has come as a setback to Lalu’s elder son Tej Pratap who had batted for Agnesh Singh for the Sheohar seat. Tej had set a deadline for the party to accommodate his own candidate but was rebuffed by his younger brother Tejashwi Prasad. Apparently vexed at increasingly being sidelined further in his own party, Tej, in turn, took a veiled jibe at Tejashwi likening him to Duryodhan, without naming his sibling.
