When young Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Prasad Yadav is pulling huge crowds wherever he is going in Bihar in the course of his Jan Vishwas Yatra, three MLAs of the Grand Alliance – one of his party and two of the Congress – crossed over to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Curiously, this development took place on February 27, that is, a fortnight after the Nitish Kumar government won trust votes on the floor of the state assembly on February 12. On that day, too, three RJD legislators voted in favour of the National Democratic Alliance government.
A few days later, six Rajya Sabha candidates of different parties were elected unopposed. Two each were of the RJD and BJP and one each of Congress and Janata Dal (United).
This raises a moot question, as to why these three MLAs have decided to jump on the BJP bandwagon now. Has it anything to do with the election for 11 seats of the Bihar legislative council which is scheduled to take place on March 21? Those whose term expires and are seeking re-election include chief minister Nitish Kumar and former CM Rabri Devi.
Changing scenario
The fact is that by alluring these three Grand Alliance MLAs at this point of time, the BJP clearly wants to shift attention from Tejashwi’s massive roadshows.
No political pundits had till January 22 ever predicted that the scenario in Bihar would change so drastically.
For months, the entire media’s attention was focused on the Ram Mandir consecration in Ayodhya. Television channels and newspapers in Bihar were filled with the stories as to how five million devotees from the state would travel to Ayodhya in days and weeks after the inauguration of the temple by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This was expected to give a boost to the BJP’s prospects in the coming Lok Sabha poll.
In sharp contrast, a flood of people can be seen lining up on either side of the roads where the 34-year old RJD leader is going.
Photo: X/@yadavtejashwi.
The Grand Alliance has announced to hold the Jan Vishwas Rally in Patna on March 3. Apart from Tejashwi, his father and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav, Congress leader and MP Rahul Gandhi and CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury will address it.
The first time Tejashwi hit the road was in Rohtas district, when he drove the vehicle of Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra. In the process, he also shared the dais with Gandhi.
And when he launched his own Yatra on February 20, the whole political scenario took a complete U-turn. The BJP and Janata Dal (United) bigwigs were taken aback by this sudden turn of events.
Then came the news that PM Modi would come to Aurangabad and Begusarai in Bihar on March 2. This would be preceded by a visit by defence minister Rajnath Singh and followed by one by home minister Amit Shah.
As elsewhere, the media had not been giving due publicity to the opposition’s activities in Bihar. But the turn-out of crowds at Tejashwi’s Yatra had compelled it to give them space.
Rise in stature
It is not that Tejashwi is proving his mettle for the first time in his still-nascent political career of eight years. In the 2020 assembly election in Bihar, he single-handedly helped his RJD come up as the largest party in the assembly. His father was then in jail.
But if this time he is pulling more crowds, none else but Nitish Kumar and the top BJP leadership must share responsibility. The Bihar chief minister has become a laughing stock because of his own self-destructive moves. And the BJP central leadership too has, by its flip-flop towards Nitish, provided an opportunity for the RJD leader to emerge much taller than his stature earlier.
Besides, the Modi-Shah duo had cut to size all prominent faces of their own party in Bihar. Today, the party has put the responsibility of its Bihar unit on Samrat Chaudhary, a party-hopper himself with a controversial past. He was sacked by the then-governor Suraj Bhan of Bihar when he was a minister in the Rabri Devi government in 1999.
The same BJP was baying for his blood on the charge of a ‘fake’ birth certificate. The governor also ordered that cases of fraud and forgery be instituted against him.
The then-leader of the opposition, BJP’s Sushil Kumar Modi, was in the forefront of the campaign against him. A quarter-century later, Samrat is the Bihar unit chief and deputy CM of the state. Sushil Modi is nowhere on the scene.
Samrat, no doubt, is young and aggressive and suits the present top brass of the BJP. But his equation with the senior leaders, especially those affiliated with the RSS, is not very smooth.
To dispel this image, he now dons a saffron coloured turban – one he had said he will take off only after ousting Nitish Kumar.
