New Delhi: Bihar’s former environment minister and Jan Shakti Dal chief Tej Pratap Yadav is now stepping into the world of reality television. He is set to contest the regional reality show Bhojpuri Bawaal, releasing on 2 August.
Joining 38-year-old Yadav in the house will be Bhojpuri personalities Pawan Singh, Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’, Amrapali Dubey, and Kajal Raghwani. The show will run on JioHotstar and Colors.
The first teaser showed all the contestants seated around a table, playing a game of truth and dare, asking each other questions about their past controversies.
While all the other contestants are seen in an off-screen avatar, Yadav appears just as he does in his political rallies and YouTube vlogs: wearing a kurta, yellow sadri, and his signature neta cap. The conversation then shifts to his relationship with Singh, where he argues that “a few people are defaming his name in society”.
In the most recent promotional clip of the show, Tej Pratap enters the house on a horse before sitting down to play chess. The 20-second video also features several visuals from his political career. Towards the end, he dances to the show’s title track and challenges viewers to recreate the step.
Tej Pratap made his Bhojpuri acting debut with Apaharan Udyog (2016), where he played the Chief Minister of Bihar. In 2018, he attempted to enter the silver screen with Rudra: The Avatar. While he unveiled the film’s poster, the project never made it to theatres.
YouTube vlogs
The politician’s love for the screen is no secret. Away from politics, he has two YouTube channels.
He started his first channel LR Vlogs in 2021, where he uploaded daily vlogs. The content ranged from talking to a puppet monkey hanging on his shoulder and celebrating his YouTube Silver Play Button by distributing sweets, to becoming a tech YouTuber by unboxing a new camera for his vlogging setup.
In one vlog, Tej Pratap visits an amusement park in Patna called Disneyland. Sitting in the backseat of his car, he recalls how he and his brother used to visit the “Disneyland Mela” as children.
“We used to watch different kinds of fairy rides, different sweet shops and shopping stalls, and now I want to see what has changed,” he says in the video in Hindi.
When the channel crossed 1 lakh subscribers on YouTube, his celebration extended beyond the internet. Large banners carrying his photograph from a Singapore trip appeared across the streets of Patna, thanking people for helping him reach the milestone.
He stopped updating LR Vlogs two years ago, but returned last year with a new channel, TY Vlogs, featuring noticeably better camera and sound quality. Although he is not as active as he was on his previous channel, the content remains equally unconventional.
On the channel, he may appear as a food vlogger tasting lassi, a detective explaining to viewers how a theft took place at his house, and in another video, he is seen shouting at a local reporter, alleging that the journalist had been sent by his political enemies.
He even campaigned against superstition in one video, exposing a “ghost” he had planted on a mango tree. Dressed entirely in white, the ghost was revealed to be Munna, a man who works at Tej Pratap’s house.
“Ye bahut saare blogger hain jo haunted ke naam pe, blogging ke naam pe… bahut jagah shoot karte hain. Bolte hain Patna mein yahan bhoot hai. Bilkul aisa kuch nahi hai (There are many bloggers who, in the name of a haunting, in the name of blogging, shoot at a lot of places. They say there are ghosts in Patna. Of course, there’s nothing like that),” he says in the vlog.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
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