New Delhi: It will be too early to write the political obituary of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), which got 62 lakh votes or 15% of the total votes polled in Bihar in the 2019 polls, but with the party failing to win on even one seat and with its patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav unlikely to take part in active politics anymore, the party is going through a very troubling phase.
Many top leaders and ground workers, in anticipation of the 2020 October Assembly elections, are switching to National Democratic Alliance (NDA) constituents that includes the BJP, Janata Dal United (JDU) and the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).
The leaders feel that with the BJP now emerging as the preferred choice of the Yadavs in Bihar and the demise of one-man parties across India, it is prudent for them to look for greener pastures in the NDA.
Senior party leaders, who were waiting for the elections to be over, before sharing their frank views on what they call the “inexperience” shown by Tejashwi Yadav while leading the campaign and ticket distribution for the Grand Alliance, are now going to express their displeasure openly, a top RJD strategist told The Sunday Guardian.
“The Assembly elections are just 17 months away and hence people will look at means to secure their political future. There was a lot of discontent in the way Tejashwi handled the ticket distribution. The media, during the brief time he was the deputy CM and when our alliance with the JDU broke, had portrayed him as the next big thing of Bihar. That probably got into his head. He decided everything on his own. Gave non-deserving parties like Vikasshil Insan Party (VIP) and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party (RLSP) too many seats. Against our advice, he spoke against the 10% reservation for EWS in general category. The time that Yadavs and Muslims will continue to vote for us blindly has gone now. He should have tried to incorporate more castes and communities,” he said.
In 2014 polls, the RJD had won on four seats, while getting close to 72 lakh votes and 20% vote share.
An RJD spokesperson said, “We could not present a credible alternative to Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar. People saw the transformation that has taken place in the state in last few years and we could not convince the voters that we will do a better job than them. A loss of 10 lakh votes is a big loss. More worrisome is the fact that even our core vote bank – the Yadavs and Muslims – have not voted for us in the numbers that we were expecting. The charisma of Laluji has become a distant memory now. The youth do not remember him.”
With the BJP successfully being able to promote Yadav leaders like Ram Kripal Yadav, Nand Kishore Yadav and the state party president Nityanand Rai (who is also a Yadav) as some of its prominent face in the state, the Yadav community, which was averse to the BJP all these years, has now started moving towards the BJP.
The fact that the RJD could not shake off its image of a family party even in this age has not helped it. “Look at the people who run the RJD—Laluji, Tejashwi, Tej Pratap, Misa and Rabri Devi. Where is the place for a worker who has spent so many years? Where is Raghuvansh Babu? Abdul Bari Siddiqui? Why was Tej Pratap’s father-in-law given a ticket from Saran? Did we not have a loyal party worker there? It is a question of existence now—either Tejashwi should evolve and become more open, inclusive or he should make way for someone else; however, both these possibilities look unlikely. His family members are opposing him,” the party leader said.
On 23 May, when the results were being announced and it became clear that the RJD had lost, a heated argument broke between Tejashwi Yadav and Misa Bharti (party’s nominee from the Pataliputra seat) in Patna which was witnessed by security guards and local media personnel.