GAME ON FOR TEJASWI

Tejaswi Yadav is at his combative best these days; he gives as good as he gets.

- Amitabh Srivastava

This week, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) scion deftly turned the tables on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During the protracted Lok Sabha poll campaign, Modi had frequently invoked Bihar’s “jungle raj” under the 15-year reign of Tejaswi’s father, Lalu Yadav, and his mother, Rabri Devi. Choosing the right moment for a riposte, the 34-year-old wrote on X: “Mr Prime Minister, see the jungle raj in Bihar in your era. The CBI team that reached Nawada to investigate the UGC-NET paper leak was attacked. Paper leak under your government, attack on CBI under your government and jungle raj someone else’s?”

The natural air of confidence that the former deputy chief minister wears never seems an aberration—it is in the personality itself, but these days the circumstances are propitious too. Although the RJD secured only four Lok Sabha seats, narrowly missing out on three others, it garnered an impressive 9.6 million votes, up from 6.3 million votes in 2019. That made it the party with the highest vote count in Bihar. To be sure, this is partly the function of a larger battlefield footprint: the party contested 23 seats, four more than in 2019. But holding his own against the combined wiles of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the BJP’s Chanakyas, Tejaswi has ended with more wind in his sail. The RJD now aims to capitalise on this momentum, with insiders confident that a victory in the assembly polls—slated for October 2025, but possibly sooner—is within reach.