From kingmakers to kin wars: How family feuds are crippling regional parties across states

NEW DELHI: There was a time when the road to power in Delhi ran through regional parties. In the age of coalition governments, leaders like Lalu Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan flaunted their titles of “kingmaker” and “weathervane”, while former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee could only blame the regional satraps for the collapse of his 13-day government in 1996.

However, as the saying goes, nothing is permanent in politics. Nearly three decades later, the fortunes of many regional parties have taken an unpleasant turn.




While these parties still play a key role in national politics, a majority of them are plagued by infighting, factionalism, and uncertainty over future leadership.

Here is a list of regional parties across the country that are reeling under such problems:

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)

Cracks appeared within Lalu Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal even before it suffered a rout in the Bihar Assembly elections held in November last year. Just as the state was entering full-fledged campaign mode, Lalu expelled his elder son Tej Pratap Yadav after he confessed his love for a woman on social media and claimed he had been in a relationship with her for 12 years.

After being ousted from the party, Tej Pratap launched his own outfit—the Janshakti Janata Dal—and fielded candidates against RJD nominees.

In the elections, the RJD suffered a major setback, winning just 25 seats—one of its poorest performances since its formation in 1997.

Before the party could digest the results, Rohini Acharya—the second of RJD chief Lalu Prasad’s nine children and the kidney donor who saved his life—launched a broadside against the Lalu family. She accused key members of Tejashwi Yadav’s inner circle of humiliating, sidelining, and coercing her.

She announced that she was quitting politics and “disowning” her family after a reported heated argument with her brother Tejashwi Yadav over the party’s Assembly election debacle. She also alleged that she was accused of donating a “dirty kidney” to her father after “extracting crores of rupees and a Lok Sabha ticket”.

Lok Janshakti Party (LJP)

Former Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s death in 2020 triggered a power struggle between his son Chirag Paswan and brother Pashupati Kumar Paras.

In 2021, Chirag was ousted from the LJP following a coup led by his uncle and rebel MPs. He was also blamed for the party’s disastrous performance in the 2020 Bihar Assembly elections.

The first round of the tussle was won by Paras after Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla recognised him as the leader of the LJP in the House, virtually sealing his claim.



Soon after, the Election Commission allotted new party names and symbols to the two factions. Chirag’s group became the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) with the helicopter symbol, while Paras’s faction was named the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party with the sewing machine symbol.

However, Chirag’s fortunes changed after the 2024 general elections, as his party won all five Lok Sabha seats it contested in Bihar. Paras’s faction, meanwhile, was pushed out of the BJP-led NDA.


Chirag repeated his success in the 2024 Assembly elections, emerging as the third key player in the NDA’s landslide victory. LJP (RV) won 19 of the 29 seats it contested, helping the NDA cross the 200-seat mark.

His dominance was evident during seat-sharing talks, as his party secured a substantial share despite winning only one of its 143 candidates in the 2020 Assembly polls—its leverage coming from the clean sweep in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)

Ajit Pawar led a split in the Nationalist Congress Party, breaking away from his uncle Sharad Pawar along with several senior leaders. His faction joined hands with the BJP and Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

Ajit had objected to Sharad Pawar continuing as party chief despite his age and favoured aligning with the ruling coalition, while Sharad Pawar’s faction insisted on remaining in the opposition.

Ajit was sworn in as deputy chief minister. The Election Commission later recognised his faction as the legitimate NCP and retained the ‘clock’ symbol, while Sharad Pawar’s group—NCP (SP)—adopted the ‘tutari’ (curved trumpet) symbol.

After setbacks in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Ajit Pawar admitted that breaking away from his family had been a “mistake”, even as he justified the split as necessary for “stability and progress in Maharashtra”.

However, ahead of the upcoming local body polls in Mumbai, Pune, and Pimpri-Chinchwad, both factions decided to come together.

“For the sake of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation elections, the ‘clock’ and the ‘tutari’ have united. The parivar has come together,” Ajit Pawar said.

The alliance, however, is limited to Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, and Sharad Pawar was not involved in the decision-making process.

Shiv Sena

Shiv Sena split in 2022 after Eknath Shinde led a rebellion and formed the government in Maharashtra with BJP support.

Shinde, along with nearly 40 MLAs, accused then chief minister Uddhav Thackeray of betraying Bal Thackeray’s Hindutva ideology and diluting the party’s core principles for power.

On June 20, Shinde and rebel MLAs moved to Surat and later Guwahati, prompting governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari to call for a floor test on June 22 as the MVA government teetered.

Uddhav Thackeray resigned on June 29 without facing the trust vote, paving the way for Shinde to be sworn in as chief minister on June 30, with BJP’s Devendra Fadnavis as deputy chief minister.

The Election Commission later recognised the Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena and allotted it the ‘bow and arrow’ symbol based on the number of MPs and MLAs supporting it.

In the 2024 Maharashtra assembly elections, the Shinde-led Shiv Sena won 57 seats, while Shiv Sena (UBT) managed only 16.

Bahujan Samaj Party

BSP supremo Mayawati is known for crushing factionalism with an iron fist. However, she has repeatedly made headlines for the ups and downs in her relationship with her nephew Akash Anand.

In May 2024, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister removed Akash Anand as her political heir and stripped him of all party posts, only to later re-designate him as her successor.

His reinstatement proved short-lived. In March 2025, Akash was again removed as national coordinator of the party.

Reportedly, Mayawati felt that Anand was under the influence of his father-in-law Siddharth. Additionally, Akash failed to make an impact in the Haryana and Delhi assembly polls after being appointed in-charge. He had also questioned the BSP’s traditional fundraising method, known as the ‘Kitaab system’.

However, Mayawati later pardoned her nephew and re-inducted him into the party, claiming that Akash had been reaching out to party workers and seeking forgiveness after his expulsion.

Samajwadi Party

The seeds of discord within the Samajwadi Party were sown in 2016, when then Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav moved against his uncle Shivpal Yadav by sacking ministers and bureaucrats believed to be loyal to him.

Shivpal had played a key role in merging the Quami Ekta Dal of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari with the SP, a move that was later reversed following opposition from Akhilesh.

During the family feud, party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav acted as mediator and warned his son that the SP would split if Shivpal resigned from the state cabinet.

Despite this, Shivpal broke away and launched the Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (Lohia) in 2018. His party contested 30 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections but failed to win any.

Following Mulayam Singh Yadav’s death, efforts were made to reunite the family, culminating in the ‘chacha-bhatija’ duo coming together to ensure the victory of Dimple Yadav in the bypoll necessitated by the SP founder’s demise.

Bharat Rashtra Samithi

K Chandrashekar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi found itself in similar power tussle after the former Telangana chief minister expelled his daughter K Kavitha for speaking out against her cousin and former minister T Harish Rao.

After securing bail in the Delhi excise policy case last year. Kavitha began the second phase of her political career. However, she became increasingly vocal—against her own party.

She accused Harish Rao of having a tacit understanding with Chief Minister Revanth Reddy to defame her father, particularly after the Congress government ordered a CBI probe into alleged irregularities in the Kaleshwaram project built during the BRS regime.

Recently, Kavitha announced that she would soon form a political party and vowed to return to legislative politics as a “political force”.
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