Patna: Two weeks ago, as the Voter Adhikar Yatra was flagged off from Sasaram, Tejashwi Yadav was in the driver’s seat, literally, steering the vehicle that, with Rahul Gandhi on board, would go on to traverse 1,300 km across Bihar.
By Monday, when the Yatra culminated in a rally that brought the heart of Patna to a standstill, Tejashwi had become more or less a sideshow, with Rahul, who announced in his concluding speech that he would soon drop a “hydrogen bomb” of a revelation on alleged vote theft, emerging as its central face.
The streets of Patna, awash with Congress posters and banners, offered a similar preview. So did the chatter along the route of the final leg of the Yatra: “Congress ab peechlaggu nahi hai, Tejashwi ko Rahul ne dhak diya (Congress is no longer a hanger-on; Rahul has overshadowed Tejashwi).”
It was not lost on Tejashwi that Rahul had, during the Yatra, sidestepped a question on who would be the CM face of the alliance. On Monday, Tejashwi made it all but clear that the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) would not entertain any ambiguity on this front, virtually projecting himself as the chief ministerial candidate from the dais.
“Tejashwi aagey aagey, yeh sarkar peeche peeche (Tejashwi takes the lead, this government merely follows),” the RJD leader said, addressing a public gathering at Patna’s Dak Bungalow Chowk, where police stopped the Yatra from proceeding to its originally planned endpoint at the statue of B.R. Ambedkar near the Patna High Court.
“You decide-do you want an original chief minister or a copycat? You want an original CM, right?” he added, drawing loud cheers from the crowd.
While the allegation of vote theft raised by the Lok Sabha Leader of the Opposition, may have been the central theme of the Yatra, which touched 110 assembly constituencies across 25 districts, its role in energising the Congress cadre has thrown up a fresh challenge for the Opposition alliance ahead of seat-sharing talks.
In some ways, the RJD, which is the largest party in the opposition alliance, could sense that the Congress may use the momentum generated by the Yatra as a leverage during the seat-sharing talks.
On 17 August, the day of its launch from Sitamarhi, the RJD had plastered social media with images of Tejashwi steering the Yatra vehicle with the caption, “Yatra agar Yudh bhoomi ki ho toh yaad rakhna, sarthi humesha koi ahir hoga, har yug mai (If the journey is to a battlefield, remember that a Yadav will always be the charioteer).”
On Monday, the BJP also took swipes at Tejashwi, saying that he had to play second fiddle to Rahul during the Yatra.
“Throughout their yatra, Rahul Gandhi was always in the front in the car, and Tejashwi Yadav stood behind him. Why has Tejashwi Yadav been reduced to a number two player in Bihar? Congress has no vote here and is completely at your mercy and you have become a number two player,” Patna Sahib MP Ravi Shankar Prasad said at a press conference in New Delhi.
The former Union minister took repeated jabs at the RJD leader as well for playing “second fiddle” to Rahul in Bihar despite the Congress lacking a political base in the state. Tejashwi has claims over the chief minister’s chair but has ceded the front seat to Rahul, he added.
In 2020, the Congress was widely seen as a drag on the Mahagathbandhan, winning only 19 of the 70 seats it contested. In contrast, the RJD contested 144 seats and won 75, while the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist), or CPI(ML), put up a strong showing, winning 12 of the 19 seats it contested.
Incidentally, this time, Rahul’s close aide Krishna Allavaru, who is the Congress’s Bihar in-charge, will steer the seat-sharing talks on behalf of the party. The party also made Rajesh Kumar, a Dalit face, its Bihar president, replacing Akhilesh Prasad Singh, who is perceived to be close to RJD supremo Lalu Prasad.
A senior Congress leader told ThePrint that while seat-sharing was yet to be finalised, the party had received feelers from the RJD that it would have to set aside 15-20 seats from its pool of seats for Mukesh Sahni’s Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP). “Why should only us be expected to adjust? Let the talks begin,” the leader said.
Meanwhile, the concluding day of the Yatra, also saw Rahul announcing that the Congress would soon produce fresh evidence to buttress its allegations of the Election Commission colluding with the BJP to manipulate voter rolls.
“We had shown an atom bomb in Mahadevapura. Now, BJP people get ready, as a hydrogen bomb is coming. The people of Bihar have given a message to the whole country that we will not let votes be stolen.I am giving you a guarantee that after the hydrogen bomb, Narendra Modi ji will not be able to show his face to this country,” Rahul said, as the crowd erupted in cheers.
Tejashwi, Sahani, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPI(M) general secretary M.A.Baby, CPI’s Annie Raja, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Yusuf Pathan, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut were among the INDIA bloc leaders who attended the public gathering that marked the end of the Yatra.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
Also Read: Playing parai, working charkha & learning Jiu-Jitsu. Congress has a new Rahul-inspired training module
