Bihar Elections 2020 | Sink Or Swim: In Lalu’s Absence, Onus Of Lighting RJD’s ‘Lantern’ Lies On Tejashwi

The electoral clash of Tejashwi with veterans like Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi, is being viewed as sink-or-swim situation for Yadav who is still a political greenhorn as compared to his rivals.

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Bihar Elections 2020: Tejashwi Yadav, younger son of Rashtriya Janata Dal patriarch Lalu Yadav, has filed his nomination for the crucial Bihar assembly polls from Raghopur seat seeking a re-election. In the absence of the jailed party supremo, Tejashwi is steering the party through the polls – a litmus test for the Yadav scion, riding on the success of RJD which emerged as the largest party in the last assembly elections.

Things were different back then, with Lalu Yadav himself spearheading the campaign, the Lalu-Nitish (Janata Dal duo) squaring off against the BJP. Five years later, the arithmetic in Bihar has been altered completely. Tejashwi’s ‘Nitish chacha’ is now a BJP ally and is leading the electoral warfare against RJD-Congress-Combine on the lines of ‘15 years versus 15 years (15 years of NDA compared to 15 years of the RJD government)’.

While it is undeniably true that with Lalu Yadav serving jail term after being convicted in multiple fodder scam cases, Tejashwi has a huge task ahead-  the first being cleaning the image of the party. The entire onus of attaching the premise of ‘development’ to RJD, lies on him. Tejashwi made his electoral debut in the year 2015 Vaishali district’s Raghopur seat. With hardly seven years in active politics, and five years of prominent presence, he is now all by himself manning the biggest project of his political career. His allies Congress, Left and others like the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) are also trying hard to hold their ground in the poll-bound state. Tejashwi became the deputy Chief Minister of Bihar with Nitish Kumar as the CM in 2015 and remained in office until in 2017 when he was booked in the IRCTC case. Lalu who is a former railway minister, his wife Rabri Devi and son Tejashwi are accused in a case related to alleged irregularities in granting operational contract of two IRCTC hotels to a private firm.

Though, Tejashwi saw the debacle of the party in the Lok Sabha elections 2019 where it drew a blank, he did not cower back, rather adopted a more vocal and attacking stance, not leaving a single opportunity to point out the slip-ups of the NDA government, both at the Centre and the state.

The electoral clash of Tejashwi with veterans like Nitish Kumar and Sushil Modi, is being viewed as sink-or-swim situation for Yadav who is still a political greenhorn as compared to his rivals. If under his leadership the RJD manages to gain big numbers, Tejashwi’s graph will see a significant spike. But this does not happen, ahead lies a tough battle for survival. Will the slogan ‘Jab Tak Rahega Samose Mein Aaloo Bihar Mein Rahega Lalu’ echo after a long silent interlude, or will it again go with ‘Bihar Mein Bahaar Hai, Nitishe Kumar Hai’? Well, this is for the time to tell, but surely with so much happening in the state, it will be interesting to see who will emerge victorious in this high voltage political slugfest.