Patna: Heavyweight Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and former federal minister Raghunath Jha died at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi late Sunday night, dealing another blow to the party. Jha who held many portfolios both in the state government and Union government had kidney ailments.

Jha, who hailed from a northern Bihar’s Sheohar district, had helped RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav become the chief minister of Bihar in 1990. Jha had turned the contest being held for electing the chief minister of Bihar triangular and grabbed 27 voters, thus helping Yadav emerge victorious against his rival, Ram Sundar Das, in the fight for the throne. But for Jha jumping into the contest, Yadav would have lost.

Jha was elected Member of Parliament twice and represented the Sheohar assembly seat six times. But the peak moment of his career came when he was inducted as a minister for heavy engineering and public enterprise in the United Progressive Alliance government headed by Dr Manmohan Singh. He also served major political parties such as the Congress, Socialist Party and the Samajwadi Party.

Just ahead of the last assembly polls in held in 2015, Jha had quit the RJD, charging the party president with ignoring senior leaders and putting the entire focus on his children. But little over a year later, he later returned to the RJD fold in January last year and was accorded a warm welcome by the party. Since then he had been with the party, attending party meetings.

RJD chief Yadav, who is currently in jail in connection with the fodder scam, expressed his deepest condolence over his untimely death. “I am deeply shocked at the death of my leader but I can’t pay him even floral tributes since I am in jail,” Yadav told newsmen when he was brought to the local court in Ranchi for his appearance in another fodder scam case.

This is the second biggest setback for the RJD in the past four months. The RJD suffered the first setback in September last year when it lost veteran leader and parliamentarian Mohammad Taslimuddin, who died of prolonged illness at a hospital in Chennai.

While Jha was a powerful upper caste leader, Taslimuddin was a mighty Muslim leader who brought the RJD to a new height in the Seemanchal (bordering) zone having significant minority population.

Taslimudidn also enjoyed a strong grip over the masses across castes; he represented the Bihar assembly seven times and the parliament five times since he began his political career in early 60s with the grass-root panchayat (village council) politics. He became the federal minister twice, apart from becoming ministers in the state government.