He played an active role in 1942 Quit India Movement. In the late 1980s, some of the remnants of Janata Party had come together to form
Janata Dal, which formed a coalition government at the national level following the
1989 Indian general election. In
1990 Bihar Legislative Assembly election, Janata Dal won the largest number of seats and sought to form government with the outside support of BJP and Communists. Das was a contender for Chief Ministership pitted against
Raghunath Jha and
Lalu Prasad Yadav. Yadav was supported by
Devi Lal and
Nitish Kumar, Jha by
Chandra Shekhar and Das by Prime Minister,
VP Singh. Lalu Yadav had campaigned vastly in favour for implementing Mandal Commission, which sought to reserve government jobs for backward castes in Central government jobs. Das was less keen on this.
VP Singh's support of Das was interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm for this form of social engineering.
Nitish Kumar rallied backward caste MLAs towards Yadav. In the election, Yadav won narrowly over Das by a vote of 59 to 56. Jha won 12, mostly upper caste MLAs. He died on 6 March 2015 at the age of 94.
Electoral record • 1957 : lost from
Hajipur (Lok Sabha constituency) in
1957 Indian general election, as
Socialist Party (India) candidate • 1968-1977 : Member of
Bihar Legislative Council. • 1977 : Elected to
Bihar Legislative Assembly from
Sonpur (Vidhan Sabha constituency) (सोनपुर) • Served as
Chief Minister of Bihar in 1979 • 1984 : Lost Lok Sabha election from
Palamu seat as
Janata Party candidate, then in
Bihar and now in
Jharkhand. • 1985 : Lost Bihar Vidhan Sabha election from
Garkha (SC) seat, as
Janata Party's candidate • 1990 : Elected to
Bihar Vidhan Sabha from
Patepur. Vacated the seat next year when elected to
Lok Sabha. • 1991 : Elected to
Lok Sabha from
Hajipur, as
Janata Dal candidate candidate, but he could be a different person with the same name. Das was probably never a part of Samata Party. • 1998 : Lost from
Hajipur as member of
Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya) • 1999 : Lost from
Hajipur as member of
Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya). Came third with just 5,027 votes. • 2004 : One Ram Sundar Das lost Lok Sabha election from Hajipur as member of
Samajwadi Janata Party (Rashtriya), but he might be another person with the same name because his age was just 67 as per the data. But the age could be a typo. • 2009 : Elected to
Lok Sabha from
Hajipur, as
Janata Dal (United) candidate. Defeated
Ram Vilas Paswan. • 2014 : Lost
Lok Sabha Election from
Hajipur (came third), as candidate for
Nitish Kumar's
Janata Dal (United) ==References==