Who took Lalu's seat?

New Delhi, July 11: Vanquished in the electoral arena of his home state Bihar, Lalu Prasad is jostling for space in the corridors of power here, while other leaders of his Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) regret having snapped ties with the Congress during the elections.

With the number of RJD MPs crashing from 24 in the 2004 elections to just four now, the former railway minister has lost his berth in the front benches of the Lok Sabha and has been forced to plead to the speaker to allot him a front-row seat.

But he knows his demand is unreasonable, and has resigned himself to his fate. "I will follow the speaker's direction. There is no problem in asking questions even from the back rows of the house," Lalu Prasad said.

The RJD has also lost its office in Parliament House -- it has been allotted to the Bahujan Samaj Party. Lalu Prasad met Speaker Meira Kumar and pleaded with her not take away the office that is still plastered with photographs of him and his wife Rabri Devi.

As a cabinet minister in the last government, Lalu Prasad used to sit just behind Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in the previous Lok Sabha. Now his party's MPs are yet to be allotted seats. They sit wherever there is space -- mostly in the back benches.

"Baithne mein kya hain, jahan jagah khali milti hum baith jaate hain (What's the big deal about sitting? We sit wherever there is space)," Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, former minister and Lalu Prasad's close confidant, said.