New Delhi | Jagran News Desk: The Bihar Assembly Elections 2020 are just around the corner and the war of words between the political parties are on full swing. Apart from Nitish Kumar, who is the CM face of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the leader of opposition in Bihar Legislative Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav has found himself as the chief ministerial candidate of the Grand Alliance (Mahagathbandhan), which includes three major political blocs -- the Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and several other left parties.
Born on November 9 in 1989 to former Bihar CMs Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi, Tejashwi Yadav initially picked cricket as his career and even played some matches in Ranji Trophy and was also a part of Delhi Daredevils for 4 years in the Indian Premier League. However, he did not get to play any match. He studied up to ninth grade, and then dropped out of school without completing his primary education, to pursue his career in cricket.
Tejashwi Yadav made his political debut when he contested from RJD's stronghold Raghopur seat in 2015 and defeated BJP's Satish Kum by a margin of 22,733 votes. With this win in his first election stint, Tejashwi was chosen as the deputy to chief minister Nitish Kumar, whose party JD(U), contested the elections in alliance with the RJD and Congress and emerged as the winners, with RJD candidates winning on 80 seats, JDU on 71 and Congress on 27 seats.
However, soon after the dream come true for Lalu and his son, Tejashwi, the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2017 registered a case of corruption against him, his father and his elder brother Tej Pratap. The dark clouds further intensified when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) booked them in another criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2002.
The corruption charges proved to be the worst nightmare for the Yadavs as Nitish Kumar-led JD(U) ended the Grand alliance and switched back to his old ally the BJP to form a more stable government in 2017. Soon after the crisis in Bihar government, the young RJD leader found himself going from No. 2 in the state to the opposition bench overnight.
Since then he is serving as the leader of the opposition in the Bihar Legislative Assembly. In 2018 he also took the reigns of RJD after Lalu Prasad Yadav's arrest in the years-old fodder scam. The leadership of Tejashwi was though not accepted by some of the senior party leaders as well as allies and led to many senior ally leaders including Upendra Kushwaha and Jitan Ram Manjhi, to leave the grand alliance.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections, Tejashwi's magic flopped miserably, as the RJD failed to even win one of the 40 Lok Sabha seats under his leadership. He vanished for more than a month and resurfaced in late June, explaining his disappearances on treatment for a leg injury. Since then, the junior Yadav has been slowly building up the pressure on Nitish Kumar by raking up issues like unemployment in the state.
Now it will be worth the wait to see if Tejashwi could sway the people of Bihar against Nitish Kumar and the BJP amid the anti-incumbency sentiment and growing voices over the issues of unemployment and lack of education in the state.