The heat is on Janata Dal (United) MLA Chetan Anand, with resident doctors at AIIMS Patna accusing him and his wife, Ayushi Singh, of allegedly assaulting security personnel and threatening resident doctors in the hospital premises.
Chetan, 33, belongs to a political family. His father Anand Mohan has been a former MP and was one of the founding members of Samata Party along with George Fernandes and Nitish Kumar. His mother Lovely Yadav is currently the JD(U)’s Sheohar MP.
Anand had staunchly opposed Lalu Prasad and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) during the mid-1990s. He formed his own outfit, Bihar People’s Party, at the time. But in a twist not uncommon in politics, the Bihar People’s Party had joined hands with Lalu Prasad in late 1990s.
This coincided with a high-profile case in the form of criminal proceedings launched against Anand in connection with the mob lynching of then Gopalganj district magistrate G Krishnaiah in 1994.
Subsequently, the Anand family stayed away from politics and began to lose relevance.
In 2020, Chetan took the plunge into politics and decided to contest the Assembly elections that year. In his own words, it was to “carry forward the political legacy of his father” who still remains a force to reckon with in the Kosi belt. The RJD gave him a ticket and he won the polls comfortably from Sheohar.
During the campaign and afterwards, Chetan demanded the release of his father, who was then serving a life sentence in the Krishnaiah lynching case.
The Patna High Court had commuted Anand’s sentence to life in 2008. On April 10, 2023, the Bihar government under Nitish Kumar amended its jail manual to allow remission to convicts who have completed 14 years as against the prior provision of 20 years. On April 24, the Bihar law department ordered his release.
After Nitish’s move on remission, there were signs that Mohan family was getting closer to the JD(U). After Anand’s release, Nitish was even invited to the family’s native village in the Saharsa district.
The family’s support came handy for Nitish at the time of the February 2024 trust vote, months before the Lok Sabha polls. Chetan, along with two other RJD MLAs, crossed over to the JD(U) and helped Nitish gain 129 votes in his favour. There was no vote against, as the Opposition walked out before the voting.
High drama was seen in the run-up to the trust vote. His family had complained to the Patna police that Chetan had “gone missing”. The police even rushed to the residence of RJD leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav in search of Chetan.
On the day of the trust vote, Chetan entered the House and went straight to treasury benches along with the other two RJD rebels. The RJD’s application to cancel the membership of the three rebels has been pending with the Assembly Speaker.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Lovely was given the Sheohar ticket. She defeated RJD candidate Ritu Jaiswal by 29,000 votes.
Though Chetan has refrained from giving his version on the Patna AIIMS incident, JD (U) chief spokesperson Neeraj Kumar has come to his defence, saying that “Patna Police is yet to complete its investigation. As a public representative, Chetan Anand was well within his rights to visit the hospital to see a patient. There is also a standard security protocol for a legislator. Why did the doctors go on strike even before the police completed its investigation?”
RJD spokesperson Mrityunjay Tiwari, however, said: “What Chetan Anand did at AIIMS shows the kind of feudalistic mentality he carries. We want Patna Police to conduct a thorough probe.”