Lalan sends legal notices to media houses for reports claiming he conspired against Nitish

Former JD(U) president Rajiv Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’ on Saturday slapped legal notices on a number of top media houses for running stories accusing him of having conspired to topple the Nitish Kumar government in Bihar.

Lalan, who gave up the top party post recently, claiming that he wanted to give more time to his parliamentary constituency Munger ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, shared copies of the notices on social media.

The media reports had spoken of a meeting that took place in Patna at the residence of a Bihar minister on December 20, where, it was alleged, Lalan had called a dozen MLAs of the JD(U) and asked them to help him in replacing Kumar with Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav as the chief minister.

The news articles had claimed that Kumar, the JD(U)’s supreme leader, got wind of the conspiracy and, therefore, decided to take over as the national president himself, losing trust in Lalan who had grown too close to the RJD, founded and headed by Yadav’s father Lalu Prasad.

“The reports run by these media houses were fabricated and aimed at tarnishing my reputation. I have asked them to apologise failing which I will lodge defamation suits within 15 days,” he said on X. “It was upon my request that the honourable chief minister allowed me to give up the national president’s post and agreed to take over himself. It is a matter of delight for all workers of the party of which I happen to be a founding member. But a section of the media tried to portray me as a villain in the party,” alleged Lalan.