PATNA: Jailed RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s elder son and former Bihar minister Tej Pratap Yadav has filed for divorce from his wife Aishwarya Rai barely six months after their marriage, it was revealed on Friday.
Even though the Yadav family remained tight-lipped on the matter and the party’s leaders rubbished the reports as “baseless”, Tej Pratap Yadav’s lawyer Yashwant Kumar Sharma confirmed that a divorce petition has been filed at Patna’s civil court and that November 29 has been fixed as the date for a hearing.
Tej Pratap, 30, who served as health and environment minister in the erstwhile 20-month-old Grand Alliance government, left for Ranchi on Friday to meet his father, Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is in a hospital there under judicial custody. Tej Pratap refused to answer journalists’ questions about his divorce petition.
The first-time MLA had married Aishwarya Rai, daughter of former minister and serving RJD MLA Chandrika Rai in a spectacular ceremony in Patna on May 12. Several top political leaders, including CM Nitish Kumar and former Uttar Pradesh CM Akhilesh Yadav, had attended the ceremony.
Sources said the divorce petition (matrimonial case number 1208/2018) has been filed by Tej Pratap under Section 13 (1) (1A) of the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, which deals with cruelty by a spouse against the other. “The two spouses failed to get along cordially and therefore the divorce petition was filed,” said Tej Pratap’s lawyer, declining to give further details.
Aishwarya Rai, 25, the elder daughter of six-term MLA and former minister Chandrika Rai of RJD, was spotted getting out of his house with him and her mother and entering the official residence of Tej Pratap’s mother and former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi on Friday evening. Lalu and Rabri’s eldest daughter and Rajya Sabha member Misa Bharti also reached Rabri Devi’s residence. None of them answered journalists’ questions on the issue.
Chandrika Rai, who is the son of former Bihar chief minister Daroga Prasad Rai, had met Lalu Prasad Yadav in Ranchi last month. Sources said efforts are on by both the families to bring about a rapprochement between Tej Pratap and Aishwarya.
Tej Pratap has reportedly been unhappy about public perceptions that he is being sidelined in RJD because his younger brother Tejashwi Yadav has been controlling the party’s affairs single-handedly. Tejashwi, 29, who served as Bihar’s deputy chief minister in the Grand Alliance government, has already been declared as Lalu’s heir apparent and the future chief ministerial candidate of the RJD-led alliance.