Lalu Prasad: Skipping Patna

New Delhi, April 29: Patna, eat your heart out. Lalu Prasad isn’t going to waste his big banquet on a city that has lost its appetite for him.

The railway minister’s third daughter, Chanda, gets married tomorrow. But the wedding, unlike those of her elder sisters Misa and Rohini, will be held in Delhi, the current sphere of their father’s influence.

If that sounds like a snub to the Rashtriya Janata Dal chief’s former fief, consider this. The groom, unlike the Yadav engineers whom Misa and Rohini married, is not from Bihar. Vikram Singh is an Indian Airlines pilot from Haryana.

The wedding will be different in another way, too. The two earlier ones had been lavish enough to keep Patna talking about them for days after the baraats had left. But tomorrow’s event at the convention hall of the ITDC-run Hotel Ashoka is likely to be relatively low-key.

The hotel confirmed it had been asked to keep things simple. “The food will be vegetarian with flavours from different states and around 1,000 guests are expected,” a spokesperson said.

Chanda is studying law in Ranchi. The groom’s father is a retired soldier who is now the chief security officer at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Lalu Prasad’s critics believe the former chief minister has realised that Bihar, a state he had ruled for over a decade and a half, may be a closed chapter for him, at least for the near future. So he is trying to re-invent himself as a national-level politician and is eager to shed the image of a man moored to Bihar.

With six more offspring left to marry, though, Lalu Prasad may have many more surprises up his sleeve for the future.

The guest list, like those in the earlier ones, is a who’s who of Indian politics. President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as well as almost the entire Union council of ministers have been invited along with leaders from political parties of every hue.

One man who shone at the weddings of the elder daughters is likely to be missed, though. The bride’s maternal uncle, RJD leader Sadhu Yadav, has an arrest warrant pending against him in connection with the flood relief scam.