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New Delhi, Oct 29 (IANS) When his elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav said that Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi was living in the shadow of their father Lalu Prasad, the younger brother would have nodded in agreement as his aspiration to become the next Chief Minister of Bihar was passing through the same path.
Earlier this year, the National Executive Committee of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) passed a resolution empowering Tejashwi to equal status with founder and party president Lalu. It was thus clear which of his nine children would carry on his legacy.
Lalu-Rabri’s four children have shown interest in politics, with Misa Bharti standing by Tejashwi in the ongoing family feud and looking content as a Lok Sabha member, while the younger Rohini Acharya has supported Tej Pratap.
Rohini, who unsuccessfully contested the 2024 elections as an RJD candidate from Bihar’s Saran Lok Sabha constituency, does not hide her disappointment over her father’s support to Tejashwi. She also tells that it was she who had earlier donated a kidney to Lalu.
Therefore, Tejashwi’s rise in the RJD was due to a family feud, which is coming to the fore more clearly with the elections. The resilience and determination he has shown in his fight within the family and the party is also visible outside in the seat-sharing talks. Despite his age and experience being less than most of his colleagues, he took them on enthusiastically, refusing to bow to their demands.
He lacks his father’s rustic wisdom, but even reluctantly, it doesn’t stop him from making the partner smile. This exercise bore fruit in 2020 when the Grand Alliance fell short of the majority by only a dozen seats and the RJD emerged as the largest party by winning 75 seats out of 243 assembly constituencies in Bihar. Thus he has carried on Lalu’s legacy of using the strength of alliance when facing a stronger opponent.
In 1999, when Sonia Gandhi was ready to stake claim to form the government but Mulayam Singh Yadav refused to extend support, Lalu – despite being a political rival at times – was more willing to work with the Congress. Although he had only seven seats in the Lok Sabha, the stalwart leader from Bihar played a role in trying to bridge the gap between regional leaders and Gandhi.
In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, when the RJD won 24 Lok Sabha seats, giving Lalu enough influence to form the new government, he famously said, “I will play the role of queenmaker”, referring to his support for the Sonia-led Congress.
Ahead of the 2025 elections, Tejashwi had upset some parties including All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and national ally Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) – but he did not want the RJD to either lose vote share or lose vote bank by inducting more allies. He calculated that the inclusion of AIMIM could increase the reach of Muslims and impact Yadav votes. Bihar’s 2022 caste census report shows the former at around 17.70 per cent and the latter at around 14.3 per cent. They intend to somehow make a dent in the backward (OBC) and extremely backward class (EBC) votes, which together constitute about 63.1 per cent of Bihar’s population.
The RJD, which initially had their support, saw a decline in OBC votes, which is being seen as a shift towards Muslim-Yadav support; While EBC votes shifted to Bihar’s ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United). Thus he is trying to live up to Lalu’s legacy of using “Mandal” over “Kamandal”.
Lalu’s rise to prominence was rooted in the implementation of the Mandal Commission recommendations and the political mobilization around them. He used it as a tool against so-called Kamandal politics, which is said to favor majoritarian, upper caste-centric Hindutva projects. This unity also helped Lalu to eliminate the rising communist forces, who insisted on “class struggle” over the caste equations of the state.
However, Tejashwi also has the legacy of “Jungle Raj” under the Lalu-Rabri regime, which his critics have repeatedly raised with Nitish Kumar’s slogan of “good governance”. This is an aspect of his father’s shadow that the young Yadav is working hard to get out of.
–IANS
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