Lalu calls on Mulayam to enquire about his health

LUCKNOW: It was a coming together of two grassroots leaders when Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad called on Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav at his Delhi residence on Monday. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, who is in Delhi to attend the ongoing Parliament session, was also present with his father at the meeting, which was described as a ‘courtesy call’.
After the meeting concluded, Lalu Prasad took to Twitter describing Mulayam as “country’s senior most socialist” and the meeting as a “courtesy call to know his health and well-being”. He listed a host of common interests the two leaders share like their roots in villages, their concern and struggle against social disparity, lack of education and unemployment. “Today the country does not need capitalism and communalism. Instead social parity and socialism is the need of the hour,” he said.
Meeting of the two veteran politicians and stalwarts of their times, left political pundits guessing about the agenda of the discussion between the two. Samajwadi Party national president Akhilesh Yadav, who was at part of the ‘get-together’, tweeted photographs of the meeting but without captions.
Out on bail in the fodder scam case, Lalu Prasad is at present recuperating at his daughter Misa Bharti's residence in Delhi. Mulayam, too, was at a Gurgaon hospital and was discharged recently. Away from politics, the two leaders also happen to be closely related as Mulayam’s grandnephew Tej Pratap Singh Yadav married Lalu’s youngest daughter Raj Laxmi in 2015.