Sharad Yadav's Last Rites To Be Held At His Ancestral Village In Madhya Pradesh Tomorrow

Former Union minister Sharad Yadav's last rites will be performed at his ancestral village Ankhmau in Madhya Pradesh.

New Delhi: The last rites of veteran socialist leader and former Union minister Sharad Yadav, will take place at his ancestral village in Madhya Pradesh's Narmadapuram district on Saturday, his close associate told PTI.

Yadav's health had been deteriorating for the past few months and he was admitted to Gurugram's Fortis hospital where he was rushed after he collapsed at his Chhatarpur residence in Delhi on Thursday. He was 75 and is survived by his wife, son, and daughter.

The socialist leader was suffering from kidney-related issues for a long time and regularly underwent dialysis.

Former JD (U) Madhya Pradesh unit head and a close associate of Yadav, Govind Yadav, said the veteran leader's last rites will be performed at his ancestral village Ankhmau in Babai tehsil of Narmadapuram (earlier Hoshangabad) district on Saturday, according to PTI.

The mortal remains of Yadav will be brought from Delhi to Madhya Pradesh by plane. 

In his long political career, Sharad Yadav won the Lok Sabha election seven times and was Rajya Sabha MP four times. He also played a significant role in the implementation of Mandal Commission recommendations.

Sharad Yadav started out as a student leader, he went on to win a Lok Sabha byelection from Jabalpur in MP in 1974 as an opposition candidate against the Congress which catapulted him into national politics. Besides Jabalpur, he also won Lok Sabha polls from Badayun in Uttar Pradesh and Madhepura in Bihar, which was a rare achievement for any politician. 

Sharad Yadav held various portfolios in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government between 1999 and 2004. In 2003, Yadav became the president of the JD(U). 

In 2009, Sharad Yadav was again elected to the Lok Sabha from Madhepura. But after the JD(U)'s defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Yadav's relations with Nitish Kumar started going downhill.

In the 2017 Bihar assembly polls, the JD(U)-RJD alliance secured victory and formed the government. However, Nitish realigned with the BJP and Sharad Yadav parted ways with the JD(U). 

He founded his own party, the Loktantarik Janata Dal (LJD) in 2018 only to merge it with Lalu Prasad Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) in March 2022. 

Sharad Yadav was born on July 1, 1947, in a farmer's family at Akhmau village in the Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh.

(With Agency Inputs)