Patna: The news that Lalu Prasad Yadav has returned to New Delhi after a successful kidney transplant will bring cheer to opposition parties. Few politicians in India – if any – can match the former Bihar chief minister’s ability to take the BJP head-on and hand it several electoral defeats.The transplant, for which Lalu spent 78 days in Singapore, will ease some worries about his health. His daughter Rohini Acharya, who donated the kidney, said on Twitter that she had done her duty and now it was the common man’s duty to protect her father, who she described as the “people’s hero”.निभा कर अपना फर्ज हमनेअपने ईश्वर स्वरूप पापा को बचाया हैआगे आप लोग की बारी हैजन-जन के नायक कोरखना सेहत की निगरानी है🙏 pic.twitter.com/R2T8hg9iBQ— Rohini Acharya (@RohiniAcharya2) February 10, 2023But there is another threat that the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief faces – that he may once again be put behind bars. After all, the CBI has petitioned the courts concerned to raise Lalu’s conviction in the fodder scam cases. Lalu was convicted for five to seven years in the fodder cases and is out on regular bail after completing more than half the term. Parallelly, the CBI has filed a fresh chargesheet against him in a railway scam case – which Nitish Kumar said is indicative of political vendetta.According to Lalu the cases against him are a “manifestation” of the BJP’s fear of him. “Bhajpa humein dekhkar aisa darta hai jaisa ekranga dekh kar saandh darta hai (The BJP fears me the same way a bull fears the red cloth),” he told me when I met him in October, ahead of his departure to Singapore.The BJP has obvious reasons to fear Lalu, a regional Shatrap who has been relentless in fighting against the saffron party for the last 33 years. Be it the L.K. Advani or Narendra Modi-era, Lalu has displayed equal political aggression. He has become a synonym for anti-Sangh parivar politics in the Hindi heartland.If Lalu’s health allows him to campaign for the 2024 general elections, he can produce miraculous results against the BJP, at least in Bihar and Jharkhand, which together consist of 54 Lok Sabha seats.“It’s not a wild guess. There is ample evidence of Laluji’s power to create miracles against the BJP. Take the example of the 2015 assembly elections in Bihar, the last election he campaigned in,” remarked the RJD’s national general secretary and former Union minister Jayaparakash Yadav.Lalu’s history of taking on the BJPJayaprakash is right. In 2014, riding on the “Modi wave” and vicious anti-incumbency against the United Progressive Alliance, the BJP-led NDA bagged 32 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar. The RJD was reduced to four Lok Sabha seats. Lalu was convicted in a fodder scam case in 2013 and was in jail. His party had only 24 MLAs in the Bihar assembly. Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United), who quit the NDA, won just two Lok Sabha seats.After the 2014 polls, Lalu was released on bail. He stitched up an alliance with Nitish – which was famously dubbed the ‘Mahagathbandhan’ (Great Alliance). At a massive rally in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan ahead of the 2015 Bihar assembly polls, Lalu trained his guns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a manner which no opposition leader had done. He followed that up by addressing election rallies at the same venues as the PM, pulling more crowds than Modi. His jibes at Modi – “Aray Modiji, mat chillao nas phat jaayega (Mr Mod, please don’t shout! Your arteries will burst!) – went viral. At the end of the polls, the BJP – full of confidence after its performance in the Lok Sabha polls – got just 53 seats, an insignificant number in the 243-member lower house of Bihar.That was the last election in which the RJD supremo campaigned. Soon after, Lalu fell ill and underwent multiple heart surgeries. The trial in four cases of the fodder scam was sped up and Lalu was convicted in one after another. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided his establishments in 2017, leading Nitish to dump the Mahagathbandhan and get back with the BJP. Subsequently, Lalu was put behind bars.Lalu was unable to secure bail and could not campaign for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls or the 2021 assembly polls in Bihar. Even as his health deteriorated, his bail petitions on health grounds were repeatedly rejected by the court – which his supporters blamed on the BJP’s “machinations” and opponents said was a result of the CBI’s cases. He procured regular bail in 2022, after completing half of his sentence in jail – a statutory provision to get bail.Also Read: Why Lalu and Nitish Believe Opposition Unity Is Incomplete Without CongressEnd of ‘India Shining’The 2015 polls are a recent memory. But Lalu played a crucial role in defeating the A.B. Vajpayee-led BJP in Bihar and Jharkhand in the 2004 general election. If Vajapayee’s much-vaunted “India Shining” campaign met its waterloo and his government was unexpectedly driven out of power in 2004, paving the way to the Congress-led UPA-1, it was because of the saffron party’s massive defeat at the hands of the Lalu-led RJD-Congress alliance in Bihar and Jharkhand. The alliance won 31 seats in Bihar alone in those polls.Earlier in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls, Lalu secured a miraculous victory against Advani’s BJP. A year earlier, Advani launched his first Rath Yatra from Somnath (Gujarat) to Ayodhya (Uttar Pradesh). The yatra had created a frenzy among Hindu fanatics and helped Advani win the sobriquet “Hindu Hriday Samrat”. Non-BJP parties in the V.P Singh government at the Centre were wary of taking him on in the fear of losing Hindu votes. But Advani was arrested as his yatra entered Bihar, of which Lalu was chief minister. Surprisingly, Advani’s yatra – which helped the BJP build its base in Madhya Pradesh and other states – failed to have the same impact in Bihar. The RJD won 49 out of 54 Lok Sabha seats in undivided Bihar in the 1991 Lok Sabha polls, smashing the BJP’s dream of forming a government at the Centre.The 2000 assembly polls in Bihar also saw a miraculous victory for the RJD. Lalu stayed behind bars for months from 1997, when he surrendered in court and handed over power to his wife Rabri Devi. Rabri Devi – who could not match Lalu’s prowess against BJP – was a soft target for the BJP and she was pilloried by the party. However, she was able to return to power in 2000, thanks to Lalu’s ability to attract people more than Vajpayee or Advani.File photo of Lalu Prasad Yadav, Rabri Devi, Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav. Photo: PTIMahagathbandhan’s challengeOn February 24, the Nitish-Tejashwi Mahagathbandhan has scheduled a mega rally in Purnia, located in the Seemanchal (bordering) region – where minorities constitute a significant proportion of the population. The region has four Lok Sabha seats: Purnia, Kishanganj, Katihar and Araria. Some political pundits predict that Lalu’s return to the political scene will be at this rally.But beyond the rally, Nitish and Tejashwi – and other leaders of the Mahagathbandhan – must be praying that Lalu’s health will allow him to campaign for the 2024 polls. Moreover, they will also hope that the investigating agencies didn’t succeed in sending Lalu back to jail.On the other hand, the BJP leaders are likely to resort to all manoeuvres to ensure that Lalu doesn’t campaign in 2024 – given his strong track record of outsmarting generations of saffron party leaders.Nalin Verma is a senior journalist, media educator and independent researcher in social anthropology.Edited by Amrit B.L.S.