Live: 5 years jail for Lalu Prasad, Rabri says he will still run party

4:55 pm: Rabri Devi says Lalu will continue to run the party from jail She stepped in for him when he had to step down as Chief Minister, but this time round Rabri Devi has said that Lalu will continue to run the part from jail and they will appeal against the verdict in a higher court. “We have not received justice from the lower court…We will now approach the high court and go the public,” she told CNN-IBN.  In an interview with Times Now, the former chief minister said that the allegations against her husband were false and were the result of a political conspiracy. “Yes there was corruption but Lalu was not involved.. there is no evidence,” she said. “Laluji will run the party… no matter where he is, he will run the party,” Rabri said. 2.55 pm: Jagannath Mishra gets four years in jail Former Congress leader and now a JD(U) leader Jagannath Mishra has been slapped with four years of jail and Rs 2 lakh as fine. Meanwhile, Naresh Agarwal of the Samajwadi Party said that there was no reason for RJD to lose hope. “Just because Lalu is in jail, doesn’t mean its supporters will stop voting for the party.” Several other accused have been fined upto Rs 1.5 crore. 2.45 pm: RJD puts up a brave face Manoj Jha, spokesperson for the RJD, said that the party has re-organised itself and will hold fort till their leader is back. “We will miss his presence, but as a party we have grown in strength in the past few years,” he said. “We will look into the finer details and build a very strong case and move a higher court.” Congress leader Jagdambika Pal said, “Lalu Prasad Yadav can appeal to a higher court and seek justice. This sentence is not the end of the road for him.” Pal said that he hopes Lalu’s son Tejaswi takes over the reins of the party and is assisted by the senior leaders of the party. Party leader Raghuvansh Yadav, however, lost his cool while facing the media and lashed out at the opposition and the press for suggesting there will be a crisis of leadership in RJD. “Who said there is a crisis of leadership in the party. Lalu ji is here himself. I am confident that he will come out in 10-20 days and he will always guide us,” he said. 2.38 pm: Lalu gets 5 years in jail Though the lawyers had pleaded for only the minimum sentence for Lalu Prasad Yadav, the special CBI court slapped a five-year sentence on him along with a fine of Rs 25 lakh. He also stands disqualified from the Lok Sabha as a MP following the withdrawal of the government ordinance to protect criminal MPs. The sentence was pronounced at 2.30 pm today. 2.31 pm: Lawyers seek minimum sentence Citing that Lalu Prasad Yadav had been a Union Minister and a chief minister, his lawyers have reportedly sought the minimum sentence. The lawyer said in the court of Pravas Kumar Singh that the RJD leader should get minimum punishment as he was “a respectable person” and held a “high position in society”. Lalu Prasad, the lawyer added, also suffered from many diseases, was 67 years old and was otherwise a law abiding citizen. The Central Bureau of Investigation, however, sought maximum punishment to show that people holding high positions cannot get away with corruption. With inputs from IANS 1.34 pm: Confusion over Lalu’s successor in RJD Though initial reports suggested that Lalu has put his house in order apprehending a conviction, news is trickling in that the party has taken an unexpected jolt post his conviction and is in a disarray over leadership. According a report on The Indian Express, immediately after Rabri Devi hinted that the family will take over the reins of the party, another leader retorted saying that ’everybody is a king’ in the party. Vaishali MP Raghuvansh Prasad Singh reportedly said, “Jisko jo ruch raha hai, keh raha hai (one is saying whatever one likes).” Lalu is likely to be sentenced for more than four years and can face up to seven years in prison. Apprehending the worst, Rabri Devi has convened an emergency meet of the party on October 6 with rumours doing the round that the RJP top brass will use this opportunity to project Tejaswi, Lalu’s eldest son as the face of the party. Meanwhile, like we noted in this article, it won’t be easy for Rabri Devi to take over the reins of the party this time, again. Rabri has been in semi retirement, politically speaking, having withdrawn from party affairs after the embarrassment of the last Assembly polls. She was nominated by the party into the Vidhan Sabha as a member of the legislative council but she has not been terribly active. 1.04 pm: Sentence to be announced at 12.40 pm Zee news reports, “Arguments on the quantum of punishment by defence lawyers Chitranjan Sinha and Pravash Kumar as well as the prosecutor’s counsel BMP Singh began around 11.30 pm.” Reportedly, Special Judge Pravas Kumar Singh will pronounce the sentence at 2.30 pm. Lalu Prasad Yadav is lodged in the Birsa Munda Central Jail and will be intimated of the sentence at 2.30 pm. 11.50 am: Arguments begin in sentencing  Arguments on the quantum of sentence to be awarded to Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, former Bihar chief minister Jagannth Mishra and others convicted in a fodder scam case began at 11 am in a Special CBI court in Ranchi on Thursday. The sentence will be pronounced to the convicted men through video conferencing in the Birsa Minda Central Jail of Ranchi. The arguments began in the Special CBI Court of Pravas Kumar Singh. The sentence is likely to be delivered at 2.30 pm. According to legal experts, Lalu Prasad could be sentenced to a jail term of four to seven years. His lawyer told reporters that he would seek a minimum sentence. 10.30 am: Will court be lenient to Lalu? The quantum of sentence to be served by RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, who has been convicted in a fodder scam case, would be announced on Thursday after arguments in a Special CBI court in Ranchi. “The court has fixed tomorrow for arguments on why the quantum of sentence should be less and for the pronouncement (against Lalu),” said one of the counsels for the former Bihar chief minister. The court of Pravas Kumar Singh, which had found Lalu guilty along with 45 others in case RC 20A/96 on Monday, would hear the arguments before handing out the quantum of sentence. [caption id=“attachment_1149359” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Lalu Prasad Yadav. Agencies.[/caption] The Special CBI court has granted bail to eight of the convicts as they had been sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment, a prison term that allows the convict to move for bail in the same court. Besides Lalu, the court also convicted another former Bihar CM, Jagannath Mishra and sitting JD(U) MP Jagdish Sharma. They are presently lodged at the Birsa Munda Central jail along with other fodder scam convicts. The sentence will reportedly be conveyed to Lalu and the other convicts via videoconferencing. With the union Cabinet endorsing Rahul’s disapproval of the government’s ordinance on criminal MPs, the options have quite literally run out for Lalu Prasad Yadav. Apprehending a similar fate, however, Lalu is said to have made extensive arrangements to make sure that his party runs without hiccups. Following his conviction, Lalu’s wife Rabri Devi said that she and his sons will run RJD in her husband’s absence. BJP, on the other hand, has taken on all the parties in Bihar saying that corruption plagues RJD, JD(U) and the Congress in Bihar. With Lalu’s sentencing, they might look towards upping their ante in the state. Meanwhile, Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar had said on the day of Lalu’s conviction that his disqualification for the House, as per the Supreme Court, will be considered only after the final sentencing takes place. The formalities involved in the process are yet to worked out. With inputs from PTI