Rohini Acharya Quits Politics after the dramatic fallout of the 2025 Bihar assembly election, turning a political setback into a deeply personal crisis within the RJD’s first family. Bihar’s elections have always been about more than numbers—family loyalties and old bonds often shape outcomes.
But this time, after the Mahagathbandhan’s crushing defeat to the NDA, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s daughter shocked everyone by announcing she was quitting politics and disowning her family. Her message on X stunned party workers, especially since she was seen as a symbol of sacrifice after donating a kidney to her father in 2022 and contesting from Saran in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Her decision and the emotional allegations that followed have turned a simple electoral loss into a full-blown family crisis, raising uncomfortable questions about the RJD’s stability, dynastic politics, and the emotional burden borne by women in political families.
The Bihar verdict that triggered a political and personal earthquake
The backdrop to this drama is one of the most decisive verdicts Bihar has seen in recent years
In the 2025 assembly election, the NDA, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Janata Dal United along with allies, crossed the two hundred seat mark in the 243 member house, securing close to three quarters of the assembly and firmly retaining power in Patna.
On the other side, the RJD led Mahagathbandhan alliance, which in 2020 had come close to unseating the NDA, suffered a heavy setback. The alliance managed only around thirty five seats, with the RJD itself falling from seventy five seats in 2020 to about twenty five this time.
Yet the party still registered roughly twenty three percent of the vote, the highest share for any single party, but that support did not convert into seats under the complex caste and constituency arithmetic of Bihar. For Tejashwi Yadav, who once again led the campaign as the alliances chief ministerial face, the result was a political blow and a personal setback.
For the wider Lalu Prasad family, however, it turned out to be the trigger for long simmering tensions to spill out in public.
Rohini Acharya between kidney donor, homemaker and politician
To understand the impact of her decision to quit politics and the family, it helps to look at who Rohini Acharya is in the public imagination. A medical graduate by training, Rohini married software engineer Samresh Singh in 2002 and moved abroad first to the United States and later to Singapore, where the couple now lives with their two children.
For years, she stayed largely out of day to day Bihar politics, occasionally appearing at family events but not playing a frontline role. That changed in December 2022 when she donated a kidney to her ailing father in Singapore, where he underwent a transplant for chronic kidney disease.
The surgery was a success and drew praise across party lines, with even political opponents acknowledging her act of sacrifice. Within the RJD base, she came to be known as the daughter who gave her kidney, a powerful emotional identity she carried into electoral politics when the party fielded her from Saran in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, a seat Lalu Prasad had won multiple times.
She lost that contest to Bharatiya Janata Party leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy, but her campaign had clearly built her image among RJD supporters. In the run up to the 2025 assembly election, she was visible on the campaign trail and was seen as broadly supportive of brother Tejashwi, even as the family handled another storm, the expulsion of elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav from both the party and the family over a personal controversy.
The explosive X post that announced her exit
It was against this backdrop that Rohini took to X on 15 November, a day after the results, and posted a short message that immediately went viral.
I am quitting politics and I am disowning my family.
This is what Sanjay Yadav and Rameez had asked me to do and I am taking all the blame.
The message, carrying both hurt and defiance, named two figures widely known in RJD circles.
Sanjay Yadav, a Rajya Sabha member from the party, has long been described as one of Tejashwi Yadavs. closest aides.
Rameez is known as an old friend of Tejashwi from a political family in Uttar Pradesh.
Her post did not spell out what exactly the two had said to her, but the implication was clear enough for party insiders.
She was linking her decision to quit politics and sever family ties directly to their role and influence around Tejashwi
The wording of her message and the fact that she posted it on her verified handle prompted multiple news outlets to reproduce it in full, including platforms such as Scroll, which embedded the original X post in their coverage.
Readers can see that embedded post in Scrolls report on her announcement at
By the time party leaders in Patna reacted, the message had already travelled far beyond Bihar, turning a state election story into a national talking point.
Hurt, humiliation and the kidney that became a flashpoint
The X post was only the beginning
In subsequent posts and in brief interactions with journalists, Rohini painted a picture of deep hurt and humiliation inside the family.
She alleged that she had been cursed, called dirty and told that she had her dirty kidney transplanted into her father, took crores of rupees and then secured a ticket, only to now be treated as an outsider. She described herself as having been made an orphan despite her sacrifice, saying she hoped no household would see a daughter with a fate like hers
In one of her most widely quoted lines, she turned her own experience into a warning for other women. To married daughters and sisters, she said that if their parental home already has a son, they should never save their god like father with such a sacrifice and instead ask the son to step forward
The language was raw, and the reference to her father as god like while simultaneously asking women to withhold such sacrifices spoke volumes about the depth of her anguish
Her kidney donation itself had become a subject of whisper campaigns months earlier, with some questioning whether she was in fact the donor, something she had publicly challenged as malicious rumours said to be encouraged by Tejashwi aides
The latest posts connect those earlier tensions with the present moment of public rupture
A family feud moves out of the drawing room and into the streets
Once Rohinis posts were out, the rest of the family and the party could not easily treat the matter as a private disagreement
Speaking at the Patna airport before flying out, she told reporters that she no longer had a family and that journalists should direct their questions to Tejashwi Yadav, Sanjay Yadav and Rameez, because they were the ones who had thrown her out.
She alleged that when she raised questions about these aides, she faced abuses and even had a slipper raised at her, an image that resonated strongly with many women watching the episode. Over the next couple of days, the feud widened
Reports suggested that three of Lalu Prasads daughters moved out of the Patna residence, while brother Tej Pratap Yadav publicly signalled support for Rohini, using religious imagery and calling out those who insulted her
Senior socialist leader and former RJD vice president Shivanand Tiwari, once very close to Lalu, launched a searing critique of the family, likening Lalu to the blind king Dhritarashtra of the Mahabharata and calling Tejashwi arrogant, adding that politics had become a business for the family
Faced with headlines about a full blown family war, Lalu Prasad Yadav tried to project calm
At a meeting of RJD legislators that selected Tejashwi as leader of the legislative party, he described the fight between his children as an internal matter that would be resolved within the family and said he was there to deal with it, urging leaders to focus on strengthening the party
Impact on RJD and the opposition space in Bihar
For a party that has built its identity around Lalu Prasad Yadavs charisma and the familys political dominance, the optics of a daughter disowning the family in public are unsettling. Electorally, the RJD has just suffered one of its worst performances in decades, with its seat tally plunging by about fifty compared to 2020 even though its vote share stayed at the top among parties
The Mahagathbandhan as a whole has been reduced to a small opposition block facing a dominant NDA that controls more than two hundred seats . Politically, the party is now trying to send a message of continuity and stability
Tejashwi Yadav, who initially showed reluctance to accept the post of Leader of the Opposition after the defeat, has been elected as leader of the RJD legislative party, signalling that the party high command still sees him as the central pole of its future strategy
Yet the public family rift gives rivals an easy narrative
The episode reinforces criticism that the party is excessively family centric, with too many decisions shaped by a small inner circle and too much energy spent managing internal equations rather than building a wider coalition in a changing Bihar. It also risks demoralising workers who had invested hopes in the next generation of leadership emerging from the same family.
The human cost behind the headlines
Beyond the numbers and strategy, there is a quieter story beneath this crisis, one that clearly matters to many ordinary readers following the developments. In 2022, when Rohini decided to donate her kidney to her father, she framed it as doing her duty as a daughter and spoke of being proud to give him a new lease of life
Her father returned to India months later to an emotional welcome, and the episode was widely hailed as an example of familial devotion. For that same person to now describe herself as orphaned, to say that the very act of donation is being mocked as a dirty kidney driven by greed, and to ask other daughters not to repeat her mistake if there is a son in the house, tells us how deep the rupture feels to her
Whether every allegation she makes is accepted by others or not, the emotional language touches on a real anxiety many women in patriarchal families recognise. Her latest posts, in which she challenges critics to launch a kidney donation drive in her fathers name or engage in a public debate if they believe she acted for selfish gain, underline that she wants her sacrifice to be seen and acknowledged, not reduced to a bargaining chip in inner party politics
Key facts about the Rohini Acharya episode
First, the timing
Rohini Acharya announced that she was quitting politics and disowning her family on 15 November, a day after the 2025 Bihar assembly election results saw the RJD led Mahagathbandhan routed by the NDA, which crossed the two hundred seat mark in the 243 member house
Second, the core message
Her X post explicitly said that quitting politics and disowning the family was what Sanjay Yadav and Rameez had asked her to do and that she was taking all the blame, putting two close associates of Tejashwi Yadav directly under the spotlight
Third, her background
She is a doctor by training, settled in Singapore with her husband, and gained wide public attention for donating a kidney to Lalu Prasad Yadav in 2022 before contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha election from Saran, which she lost to BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy
Fourth, the nature of the feud
After the initial post, she alleged verbal abuse, humiliation and even the threat of physical assault with a slipper, and said she had been accused of using a dirty kidney donation to secure political benefits, converting a medical sacrifice into a political weapon in internal disputes
Fifth, the wider fallout
Her decision has deepened visible rifts within the Yadav family, with reports of sisters leaving the Patna residence, Tej Pratap siding with her and senior leaders like Shivanand Tiwari questioning the familys style of politics, even as Lalu insists that it is an internal matter that will be resolved at home
Voices and analysis from political observers
Political reactions have been swift, even if some leaders are careful to call it a family issue in public
Leaders from rival parties have framed the episode as an indictment of the RJD leadership, arguing that when even the daughter who donated a kidney feels compelled to walk away in pain, it raises questions about how power is being used and how dissent is being handled inside the party
For instance, Janata Dal United leader Neeraj Kumar reportedly said that the daughter who saved Lalu Yadavs life now talking of quitting the family is a serious question for Lalu and Rabri, highlighting the moral dimension of the fallout
Others have chosen to step back from commentary, describing it as a private matter
Some BJP leaders have publicly said they do not want to comment on internal family disputes, even as supporters on social media amplify the story to argue that the opposition in Bihar is consumed by internal strife rather than public issues
Independent analysts point to multiple overlapping themes
One is the strain that highly centralised, family based parties face when more than one sibling has political ambitions or influence
Another is the changing nature of Bihars electorate, where memories of past jungle raj, new expectations from younger voters and the appeal of stable governance under the NDA combine to make old caste and loyalty networks less reliable than before
In this reading, Rohini Acharyas outburst is not just a personal story but also a symptom of a party struggling to adapt to a new era while still revolving around an ageing patriarch and his immediate circle
What this could mean for Bihar politics in the days ahead
In the short term, the episode is unlikely to change the arithmetic in the Bihar assembly, where the NDA has a comfortable majority and the RJD remains the principal opposition party, however weakened
But in the medium term, it may affect three things:
One, the internal balance of power within the RJD
If the perception grows that crucial decisions are being driven by unelected aides rather than the wider leadership, dissent could simmer among second line leaders and workers
Two, the public image of the party
For many voters, especially outside the core base, family disputes, allegations of humiliation and talk of politics as business reinforce old stereotypes about the party and could make it harder to broaden its appeal beyond traditional caste loyalties
Three, the narrative about women in political families
Rohini Acharya’s words about feeling orphaned after donating an organ and her advice to daughters not to repeat her sacrifice if there is a son speak to a larger conversation on how womens emotional labour is taken for granted in many households, including political dynasties
How the family and the party handle this moment will therefore matter not only for their own future but also for how Bihar voters view them before the next cycle of elections.
FAQs: Rohini Acharya Quits Politics
Why did Rohini Acharya say she is quitting politics
She linked her decision to the Bihar poll debacle and said on X that she was quitting politics and disowning her family, adding that this was what Sanjay Yadav and Rameez had asked her to do while she took all the blame
How does her exit affect the RJD right now?
For now it mainly hurts the partys image and highlights internal rifts, while Tejashwi Yadav continues as legislative party leader and the NDA retains a strong majority in the assembly
Who are the two people she named in her post?
Sanjay Yadav is an RJD Rajya Sabha member and close aide of Tejashwi Yadav, while Rameez is described as Tejashwis old friend from a political family in Uttar Pradesh, though neither has publicly detailed their side of the story
What is the kidney donation issue she keeps referring to?
In 2022 she donated a kidney to Lalu Prasad Yadav during a transplant in Singapore, an act widely praised at the time, and she now alleges that some family members and critics have twisted that sacrifice into accusations of dirty motives
Has Lalu Prasad Yadav indicated how the family will handle this?
He has called the feud an internal family matter and said he is there to deal with it, asking party leaders to concentrate on strengthening the organisation after the electoral setback
