Patna: Lalu Prasad’s heir-apparent and former Bihar deputy chief minister Tejashwi Yadav, leading the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) while his father is in jail, is becoming isolated within the party.
The 29-year-old is seen by many as a reluctant politician who fails to rise to the occasion any time the RJD has a chance to embarrass the Nitish Kumar-led state government, be it the Patna floods last month or the encephalitis outbreak earlier this year.
His attitude has left RJD old-timers displeased, even those who have stood by Lalu Prasad in his gravest moments of crisis.
Shivanand Tiwari, who announced Tuesday that he has taken a “holiday from politics”, appears to be the latest example, although he stressed that his decision was triggered by fatigue.
“I have been in Bihar politics for the last 53 years. I was arrested by police for my political activities in 1965,” he told ThePrint. “Now I am feeling tired — more mentally than physically. The situation within the party is also not the same.”
Tiwari said he will try to write memoirs during his time away from active politics.
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Seniors feel sidelined
Tiwari’s “holiday” is bad news for the RJD. He has been vocal in his criticism against Nitish and his JD(U)-BJP coalition government, with a more active presence in the media than any of his RJD colleagues in Bihar.
“Shivanandji virtually calling it quits is just an indication of the despair and frustration gripping the RJD and its leaders due to the laid-back approach of Tejashwi towards politics,” an RJD MLA said.
“Shivanandji had advised Tejashwi to hit the roads instead of campaigning in a few public meetings for the bypolls held in Bihar. Tejashwi ignored the advice,” the MLA added, referring to the 21 October bypolls to one parliamentary and four assembly seats.
Apart from Tiwari, other senior leaders like Abdul Bari Siddiqui and Raghuvansh Prasad Singh are also increasingly feeling irrelevant in the RJD, sources said.
Siddiqui, the sources claimed, called up Tejashwi during last month’s floods to visit Patna’s waterlogged areas, as opposition leaders have been known to do in Bihar, but he ignored it.
“Had Tejashwi done it, Patna may still have voted for the BJP (in the 2020 assembly polls) but he would have won the hearts of Patna citizens. Tejashwi, instead, preferred to confine his attacks to Twitter,” said a former RJD minister, saying Tejashwi was in Goa when he should have been in Patna.
The bypolls this month displayed cracks in the Bihar ‘mahagathbandhan’, which includes the Congress, the RJD, the Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) of former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), and the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP).
The HAM and the VIP, separately, fielded candidates against the RJD in two seats.
Senior RJD leader Raghuvansh Prasad Singh had appealed to the two parties to merge with the RJD, but the call was never backed by Tejashwi.
“Tejashwi did not even call the HAM or the VIP to request them to withdraw from the bypolls,” said the aforementioned RJD MLA.
This was the second instance Raghuvansh Prasad was rebuffed, after his appeal for Nitish’s return to the mahagathbandhan was shot down by Tejashwi.
Raghuvansh Prasad, usually among the more vocal members of the RJD, has preferred to remain silent since then.
Upset Congress
There’s been resentment in the Congress as well since Tejashwi skipped a campaign rally for the Samastipur parliamentary bypoll, where party candidate Ashok Ram is in the fray against Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s nephew Prince Raj.
“The Congress had made arrangements for a stage and transporting the crowd to the venue on 18 October. But Ashok Ram was left red-faced when Tejashwi did not turn up on the pretext of illness,” said a senior Congress leader, adding that his absence also led many RJD leaders to question Tejashwi’s seriousness towards politics.
Tejashwi went to Samastipur on 19 October, the last day of campaigning.
The “leadership vacuum” has left the RJD with a sinking feeling despite the fact that most party leaders feel its Yadav-Muslim voterbase, which constitutes more than 30 per cent of Bihar’s votes, is more or less intact.
“The trouble is that it is not adding up,” former RJD MLA Birbal Yadav said.
Talk of a mass exodus
Tejashwi has portrayed himself as an inaccessible leader. After the party’s humiliating defeat in the Lok Sabha polls, Tejashwi was absent from Bihar for more than 50 days, all but surrendering a chance to corner the government on the encephalitis outbreak in the assembly session that began shortly afterwards.
Party members grumble that he has made no efforts to woo other sections of society either — and several incumbent MLAs complain about his inaccessibility. They allege that he is surrounded by a “caucus”, saying this was different from how it happened under Lalu Prasad, who used to surround himself with leaders of all castes and sections and remained accessible.
As a result, there is talk of a probable mass exodus from the RJD.
“Amit Shah may have done Tejashwi a favour by declaring that Nitish Kumar would be the leader of the NDA in the 2020 assembly polls… stopping RJD MLAs from shifting to the BJP and the JD(U),” said the RJD MLA, hinting that any rift between the BJP and the JD(U) might have thrown open the floodgates for defection in Lalu Prasad’s party.
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