Tejashwi hopes to cash in on anti-incumbency, job demands

Tejashwi Yadav entered Bihar politics with a bang.

- Subhash Pathak

Then 25, Yadav won the Gopalganj assembly seat in 2015 and became the youngest deputy chief minister in the state under chief minister Nitish Kumar, who was leading a JD(U)-RJD coalition government. The friends-turned-foes of the original Mandal movement, Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar, had come together, and Yadav seemed primed to claim their legacy.

But, its not gone according to script. Over the last decade, Yadav has faced several challenges, including from within his own family, even as he has struggled to grow the RJD beyond the base his father Lalu Prasad built. Though he again became deputy CM in 2022 when Kumar left the NDA for about a year, Yadav has not yet won an election on his own (and the RJD has not won a poll on its own in 20 years).