NDA's lone Muslim MP in Bihar, Mehboob Ali Kaiser joins RJD
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Patna: In a boost to the opposition party ahead of the polls, LJP MP Mehboob Ali Kaiser, the only Muslim elected to the Lok Sabha from the BJP-led NDA in Bihar, joined the RJD on Sunday.
In the presence of Tejashwi Yadav, the leader of the RJD, Kaiser, who supported former Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras during the latter's break from the LJP and was again denied a ticket by Chirag Paswan despite attempts to seek reconciliation, joined the RJD.
"Kaiser-saheb is joining us after a meeting with party president Lalu Prasad-ji. We stand to gain from his experience. It is a development that will send across a strong message in favour of our fight to protect the Constitution, which is facing threat from the ruling dispensation
Born into a family that ruled the erstwhile princely state of Simri Bakhtiyarpur in Saharsa district, Kaiser started his political career with the Congress and headed the party's state unit till 2013.
He joined the LJP in 2014 and won the Khagaria seat, which he retained five years later.
His relations with Chirag Paswan, the then LJP president, began to sour when the party denied a ticket to his son Yusuf Salahuddin in the 2020 assembly polls.
Salahuddin went on to contest and win the Simri Bakhtiyarpur seat on an RJD ticket.
It was not immediately known whether the RJD, which has announced candidates for all but one of the 23 Lok Sabha seats it is contesting, will be fielding Kaiser in the ongoing elections.
With PTI inputs