Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar may be apathetic about his national ambitions, but the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) is up to Tejashwi Yadav on his transfer to Delhi to make the best of the new coalition arrangement. in the state.
RJD leaders believe that, in his second term as CM Nitish’s deputy, Tejashwi will be more vocal, unlike the previous term, when his father Lalu Prasad was taking all the decisions. RJD sources say that Lalu has already played the role of advisor to the party.
“We see Tejashwi as CM in 2024. Nitish will go into Delhi politics while he will rule Bihar. This does not mean that the RJD will remain completely separate from national politics. It wants to be a player in the anti-BJP camp,” said Sunil Singh, member of the RJD Legislative Council (MLC). told ThePrint,
Political watchers and RJD leaders both insist that the latest developments – Janata Dal (United) breaking ties with the BJP and joining hands with the RJD – will help Tejashwi more than Nitish.
On Wednesday, former Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and BJP MP Sushil Kumar Modi had referred to Tejashwi as “real chief minister,
Tejashwi has announced that the Bihar government will fulfill the promise of providing 10 lakh jobs which he had made in the 2020 election campaign.
“The future of RJD is tied with Tejashwi, and one cannot say that it is not bright. He will be at the forefront of any election for CM in future,” said RJD national vice president Shivanand Tiwari impressionEmphasizing that “the politics of the past does not matter”.
For the last five years – when Nitish was with the BJP – Tejashwi had attacked Nitish on all fronts of governance, be it law and order or poor infrastructure in health and education. He had emerged as a crowd-puller in the 2020 Bihar election and gave the BJP-JD(U) a run for its money.
But now Tejashwi will work under Nitish’s leadership, which can blunt his aggression. In the changed scenario, especially if the RJD-JDU alliance continues till the next assembly election in 2025, Tejashwi will have to defend the performance of the Nitish Kumar government, while it is the BJP that seeks to benefit from the anti-incumbency wave against the ruling alliance. Will try
However, political analyst DM Diwakar believes that the RJD leader is unlikely to bear the brunt of the anti-incumbency wave.
This would have happened had the BJP performed better. But, after the 2020 elections, the performance of BJP ministers has been weak. People will always compare the performance of this government with the government when the BJP was in power,” said Diwakar, former director of the AN Sinha Institute of Social Studies.
Diwakar said political developments have given Tejashwi a rare opportunity to learn the political qualities of Nitish and how he turns events in his favor.
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Lessons learned from last term
While RJD leaders admit that Tejashwi slipped in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as the party’s tally fell from 4 in 2014 to zero, they explain how he propelled the RJD to become the single largest party after the 2020 elections.
“Now the combined vote of RJD and JD(U) will be out of reach of BJP. In 2020 too, there was a difference of only about 16,000 votes between the Grand Alliance and the NDA. We snatched the Bochha assembly seat from the BJP by a margin of over 35,000 votes,” said an RJD MLA who has no other ally of the BJP in Bihar other than Chirag Paswan of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas).
“So, Tejashwi will be in a much more comfortable position than in 2019, when RJD failed to open its account.”
While the JD(U) has 45 MLAs in the 243-member Bihar Assembly. RJD has 79. Along with the Congress and the Left, the Grand Alliance has more than the required majority of 122. BJP has 77 MLAs.
The RJD MLA said the grand alliance has only to ensure that its social base, which includes Yadavs, Muslims, Kurmis, Kushwahas and a section of the extremely backward classes, remains intact.
The Grand Alliance government of 2015 – when Nitish briefly joined hands with the RJD and the Congress – was beset with inherent contradictions as the two main partners were drawn in different directions.
At that time, RJD ministers were said to have shown no accountability to CM Nitish Kumar. many are not visible His Public court. they chose to report good straight To Lalu.
were also disturbing ‘Baahubali’ (strong)” like a former Siwan MP Mohd Shahabuddin and former Nawada MLA agree Ballabh Yadav, The RJD was seen protesting his arrest despite facing criminal cases.
Public criticism of Nitish senior RJD leaders like Raghuvansh Prasad Singh Too created bitterness between the two allies, While Nitish had joined hands with Lalu to keep the BJP out of power, the goals of the two allies were conflicting. “Tejashwi has become more mature. RJD MLC Sunil Singh said, we will ensure that these mistakes are not repeated.
(Edited by Tony Rae)
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