New Delhi: For Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav, the 2020 Bihar Assembly election result may have been a dream run, but that took a miserable downward turn in the current polls, where he won with a rather reduced margin while his party slipped below all expectations.
Even as trends started flowing in since Friday, November 14 morning, some of his followers claim he held to the belief that the figures would sooner or later turn in favour of the RJD until it was too late.
However, Tejashwi himself succeeded in retaining his seat from Raghopur Assembly constituency, beating his nearest rival Satish Kumar of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by about 14,500 votes while getting an almost-50 per cent vote-share. The RJD leader bagged 1,18,597 votes against the BJP candidate’s 1,04,065.
In the 2015 Assembly polls, this margin against the same rival stood at 22,733, where he garnered 49.15 per cent of the total valid votes cast in Raghopur Assembly constituency. In the 2020 state elections, where the same BJP challenger ended as the runner-up in Raghopur, Tejashwi won the seat then with a difference of 38,174 votes and 48.74 per cent share.
Thus, though he managed to attract close to half of the mandates polled in all three consecutive Assembly elections, the 2025 verdict has come with a comparatively lesser margin. Though he has been more fortunate than most of his nominees in the current election, Raghopur itself reflected the general mood among state electors who had earlier given his party a massive mandate.
In 2020, contesting in 144 of the state’s 243 Assembly constituencies, the RJD emerged as the single-largest party with 75 seats. The Opposition Mahagathbandhan bloc fell short of a majority, and Tejashwi became the Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly.
In the current polls, the RJD – again the principal party in the Mahagathbandhan – contested 143 seats, and currently stands declared winner in 20 and leading in five constituencies. These polls may go down in Bihar’s political history as one of the worst-ever performances in an Assembly election, with the party having earlier won just 22 seats in 2010.
Despite being 36 years old and the former cricketer facing a long political innings in the future, Tejashwi appears to be in a hurry. It was apparent when the allies – especially the Congress – appeared reluctant in publicly naming him their Chief Minister face, but later relented.
Incidentally, it was not Rahul Gandhi, but Congress emissary Ashok Gehlot, who finally named him as their Chief Minister face. Also, the Opposition bloc’s manifesto was declared as ‘Bihar Ka Tejashwi Prann’ or Bihar’s Tejashwi Pledge. Significantly, in an apparent attempt at gauging voters’ mood, Tejashwi embarked on a solo journey in some critical districts soon after the Mahagathbandhan’s joint “Voter Adhikar Yatra” ended on September 1.
Some observers saw this as Tejashwi’s barometer to find out if the joint exercise had indeed boosted only the Congress party’s political fortune. The son of the former Chief Minister parents has risen quickly through party ranks to become RJD’s de facto leader, with his father suffering from ailments in his advanced years. He has served as Deputy Chief Minister and held key portfolios in Bihar’s coalition governments, later going on to emerge as the challenger to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
The Lalu-Rabri scion’s adolescence combined public exposure with an early love for cricket, where he played age‑group cricket before stepping into active politics. His formal political apprenticeship began under the tutelage of his father, and he was entrusted with prominent responsibilities early on when the RJD sought to refresh leadership and present a younger face to voters.
(IANS)
