As the ruling Janata Dal (United) and the main opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal(RJD) are fighting it out ahead of the upcoming assembly elections in Bihar, the RJD suffered a big jolt on Tuesday when five of its eight members in the legislative council of Bihar quit the opposition party and joined Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) even as Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, one of its founding members, resigned as the national vice- president.

The development comes ahead of next month’s elections to the nine Council seats.

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The main opposition party’s camp witnessed a mayhem as SM Qamar Alam, a national general secretary of the RJD, and four other MLCs Sanjay Prasad, Radha Charan Seth, Ranvijay Kumar Singh and Dlip Rai tendered their resignation to the  Vidhan Parishad Acting Chairman Awadhesh Narain Singh.

The acting chairman said the five MLCs have been recognised as a separate group, the merger of which into the JD(U) has been approved and the Legislative Council has issued a notification in this regard.

Meanwhile, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, a former Union minister, who is down with COVID -19 and admitted to AIIMS, Patna, shot off a letter to the party leadership conveying his decision to step down as national vice-president as he was unhappy over the type of people being inducted into the RJD of late.

Singh is said to have been miffed over reports that Rama Singh, a mafia don-turned-politician formerly associated with Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP who had defeated the RJD veteran in his pocket borough of Vaishali in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, was likely to join the party founded and headed by Lalu Prasad.

For the 243 assembly segments in Bihar, the election is slated for October or November and all the political parties are gearing up for the upcoming elections as ruling BJP, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United and opposition RJD had formally launched their election campaigns in the beginning of the month.