Former MP Mangani Lal Mandal Elected Bihar RJD President Unopposed
The RJD will make a formal announcement about Mandal’s election at the state executive meeting on June 19
Published : June 14, 2025 at 3:17 PM IST
Patna: Former Member of Parliament (MP) Mangani Lal Mandal was elected the president of the Bihar unit of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Saturday. Mandal’s candidature is said to be backed by RJD national president Lalu Prasad and his son Tejashwi Prasad Yadav. He will replace the incumbent state party chief Jagadanand Singh, who has been holding the position since November 2019, but has been unwell recently.
The 76-year-old Mandal filed his nomination papers at the party headquarters in Patna in the presence of Lalu, Tejashwi, Rajya Sabha member Misa Bharti and other senior leaders. No other RJD leader filed a nomination.
“Mandal has been elected the state party president unopposed. He filed his nomination papers on Saturday. There was no other contender,” RJD spokesperson Mritunjay Tiwary told ETV Bharat.
The RJD will make a formal announcement about Mandal’s election at the state executive meeting on June 19.
“Our party has opted for Mandal because of his long experience, socialist ideology, he comes from the weaker section of the society, and hails from north Bihar. He will strengthen our organisation,” former MLA and RJD spokesperson Shakti Yadav said.
Though several other leaders, including Alok Kumar Mehta and Ranvijay Sahu, were also in the race, Mandal pipped them despite having returned to the RJD in January this year. He had quit the party in 2019 to join Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United (JDU).
A socialist leader, Mandal was a Member of Legislative Council (MLC) from 1986 to 2004 and a minister in the state cabinet. He served as a Rajya Sabha member from 2004 to 2009 and was elected as MP from Jhanjharpur constituency in 2009 on a JDU ticket.
Observers opine that the choice of the new state president is an attempt by the RJD to woo the extremely backward classes (EBC), a majority of whom have sided with the JDU in the polls over the past two decades. Since he hails from the Mithilanchal region, his election is also expected to send a good message among the Maithili-speaking people of the state.
Once he takes charge, Mandal will have to steer RJD in the forthcoming Assembly polls, maintain discipline in the party and also stand with Lalu and his family in the several Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) cases they are facing.
