How political novice Tejashwi Yadav gave veterans a run for their money

News Network
November 11, 2020

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Patna, Nov 11: An avid cricketer whose career never really took off, a political greenhorn who got power on a silver platter but failed to keep it, a scion of Bihar's most powerful family who could not get past the 9th grade.

That was Tejashwi Yadav until the 2020 assembly polls marked the coming of age of a politician who valiantly went down fighting an army of battle-hardened veterans.

He may have failed to learn the textbook lessons at DPS, R K Puram, in the national capital but showed an uncanny knack of reading the mind of voters, like his more famous father, as he led the opposition Grand Alliance to an impressive performance in the polls winning 110 seats in the 243-member assembly.

He also powered the RJD to the status of the single largest party in the House with 75 seats.

Analysts feel Tejashwi's poll promise of sanctioning "10 lakh government jobs at my first cabinet meeting" was a masterstroke which had the young voter swooning in a state reeling from widespread joblessness sparked by Covid-induced lockdown when the return of countless migrants home brought the state's largely agrarian economy under further stress.

The promise was good but not good enough to bring down the NDA government.

As part of a cleverly crafted strategy that endeared him to liberals, he chose to steer clear of contentious issues like the Ram temple, a bait thrown at him by top BJP leaders, and stuck to his core agenda of unemployment and alleged corruption in the Nitish Kumar administration.

For a young man whose ability to lead the party was called into question after the RJD's unprecedented debacle in the Lok Sabha elections when it failed to win even one of the state's 40 seats, it was no mean feat that he succeeded in galvanising an organisational machinery in stupor after the battering.

Doubting his leadership qualities, allies HAM of former chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, RLSP of former union minister Upendra Kushwaha and VIP of Mukesh Sahni jumped the ship in search of greener pastures elsewhere.

Humility is a trait which, according to those who saw him at school or later as an aspiring cricketer, defines the younger son of two former chief ministers which was reflected in the manner in which he accommodated the Congress and the Left, seen as a spent force in the state ever since it was swept over by the Mandal wave.

Another hallmark of his personality is the ability to think on his feet. After deciding early on in life that studies were not for him, Yadav chose not to cling to his cricketing aspirations either after the much-needed big break eluded him. Contracted by IPL franchise Delhi Daredevils for some time he remained in the reserve list.

He announced his "retirement" from cricket just a couple of years before entering politics in 2015 at the tender age of 25. The new vocation came as a perfect pitch to bat on as he won from Raghopur in the assembly election comfortably.

Soon Lalu made it clear that Tejashwi was his chosen successor, and he was appointed the Deputy Chief Minister in the Nitish Kumar government.

As fate would have it, Tejashwi's name cropped up in a money laundering case related to alleged illegal land transactions when his father was the railway minister in the UPA-1 government. Tejashwi was in his teens when the alleged scam happened.

The development drew heavy opposition fire and Nitish Kumar snapped his ties with the RJD, before returning to the NDA, giving up his ambition of heading a nationwide coalition for a "Sangh Mukt Bharat" which could pose a challenge to the Narendra Modi juggernaut.

Tejashwi took the sudden loss of power on the chin, transitioning seamlessly into a doughty leader of the opposition.

As Lalu landed in jail following conviction in a number of fodder scam cases, Tejashwi, by now the RJD's chief ministerial candidate, kept the party afloat and also rallied leaders as diverse as Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal and the Left bigwigs at a rally in New Delhi against the Muzaffarpur shelter home sex scandal, making his presence felt at the national level.

Towards the end of 2018, he seemed bogged down by problems in the family. Much of his time and energy was spent trying unsuccessfully to prevent mercurial elder brother Tej Pratap's nasty marital dispute from playing out in the open.

After the Lok Sabha poll fiasco, Tejashwi showed signs of torpor, choosing to spend most of his time away from Bihar and even giving a month-long assembly session a miss during an outbreak of brain fever and flash floods in north Bihar, providing the opposition with ample ammunition to attack him.

Leaders of the JD(U)-BJP combine ridiculed him as an "ill-prepared student afraid of facing exams" when he demanded that the assembly elections be deferred in view of the raging Covid-19 pandemic.

However, once the elections were announced, he steeled himself for the fight.

The young leader displayed quiet ruthlessness while marginalising dissenters and guile in keeping his ambitious eldest sister Misa Bharti, a Rajya Sabha MP, away from campaign and Tej Pratap confined to his Hasanpur seat.

As the NDA seemed losing its earlier surefootedness, doddering under the weight of LJP leader Chirag Paswan's rebellion, he seized the moment and launched an indefatigable campaign, addressing more than a dozen rallies a day.

His frequent references to himself as "sher ka beta" (son of a lion) notwithstanding, leaders of the JD(U) and the BJP claimed he was shying away from using the pictures of his parents in his campaign as they were emblematic of the "jungle raj".

Prime Minister Narendra Modi lent weight to the narrative by frequently referring to him as the "Jungle Raj Ke Yuvraj".

He might have failed to lead his alliance to victory, but the assembly polls have heralded the advent of a young leader on Bihar's political firmament who can feel the pulse of youth and has abundant promise.

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Agencies
April 6,2025

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New Delhi, Apr 6: President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday gave her assent to the Waqf (Amendment) Bill, 2025, which was passed by Parliament earlier this week.

Murmu also gave her assent to the Mussalman Wakf (Repeal) Bill, 2025.

"The following Act of Parliament received the assent of the president on April 5, 2025, and is hereby published for general information: The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025," the government said in a notification.

Parliament early on Friday approved the Bill after the Rajya Sabha gave its nod to the contentious legislation following an over 13-hour debate.

The discussion witnessed staunch objections from opposition parties, which termed the Bill "anti-Muslim" as well as "unconstitutional", while the government responded that the "historic reform" would benefit the minority community.

The Bill was passed in the Rajya Sabha with 128 members voting in favour and 95 opposing it.

It was passed in the Lok Sabha early on Thursday, with 288 members supporting it and 232 against it.

Parliament had also approved the Mussalman Wakf (Repeal) Bill, with the Rajya Sabha giving its nod. The Lok Sabha had already given its assent to the Bill.

After the president gave her assent, it has also become a law.

Congress MP Mohammad Jawed and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) president Asaduddin Owaisi on Friday challenged the validity of the Waqf (Amendment) Bill in the Supreme Court, saying it violated constitutional provisions. 

Jawed's plea alleged the Bill imposed "arbitrary restrictions" on Waqf properties and their management, undermining the religious autonomy of the Muslim community.
The petition, filed through advocate Anas Tanwir, said it discriminated against the Muslim community by "imposing restrictions that are not present in the governance of other religious endowments".

Jawed, the Lok Sabha MP from Kishanganj in Bihar, was a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Bill and alleged in his plea that it "introduces restrictions on the creation of Waqfs based on the duration of one's religious practice".

In his separate plea, Owaisi said the Bill took away from Waqfs various protections accorded to Waqfs and Hindu, Jain and Sikh religious and charitable endowments alike.

Owaisi's plea, filed by advocate Lzafeer Ahmad, said, "This diminishing of the protection given to Waqfs while retaining them for religious and charitable endowments of other religions constitutes hostile discrimination against Muslims and is violative of articles 14 and 15 of the Constitution, which prohibit discrimination on the grounds of religion."

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News Network
April 4,2025

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Israel has announced the launch of a new ground onslaught in Gaza City, with rescuers saying military aggression has killed at least 30 people across the Palestinian territory since dawn.

In Gaza City, the Israeli military said ground troops had begun pushing into the Shejaiya neighborhood to expand the so-called "security zone" there, claiming that civilians had been allowed to evacuate the area. 

Initial reports, however, said a Palestinian woman and her daughter were just killed in an Israeli artillery shelling on displaced people in Shejaiya.

Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli military aggression had killed at least 30 people in the Palestinian territory since dawn, adding that the toll was "not final".

A single Israeli strike on Khan Yunis killed at least 25 people, a medical source at the southern city's Nasser Hospital said. 

"The situation is very dangerous, and there is death coming at us from every direction," Elena Halas told AFP reportedly via text message, adding that she and her family were trapped in her sister's house in Shejaiya.

Israel has pushed since the collapse of a short-lived truce in the war to seize territory in Gaza. Simultaneously, it has escalated attacks on Lebanon and Syria, with a strike in the south Lebanese city of Sidon killing a Hamas commander along with his son on Friday. 

Minister of military affairs Israel Katz had said on Wednesday that Israel would bolster its military presence inside the Gaza Strip to "seize large areas that will be incorporated into Israeli security zones", without specifying how much territory.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military was dividing Gaza and "seizing territory" to force Hamas to free the remaining captives seized in the October 2023 operation inside southern settlements. 

Netanyahu has said his regime is working closely with the US to implement President Donald Trump's plan to displace Gazans.

Latest air raids have targeted Gaza City, as well as Beit Lahia, Rafah, and Khan Yunis, killing dozens of people and injuring several others.

On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of fleeing Gazans sought shelter in one of the biggest mass displacements of the war, as Israeli forces advanced into the ruins of the city of Rafah. 

A day after declaring their intention to capture large swathes of the crowded territory, Israeli forces pushed into the city on Gaza's southern edge which had served as a last refuge for people fleeing other areas for much of the war.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Thursday that 112 Palestinians were killed by Israeli airstrikes, with at least 70 of those deaths taking place in Gaza City, in the north of the strip. 

Gaza's civil defense agency said women and children were among the dead, while six people were still unaccounted for in the strike on Dar al-Arqam School in the al-Tuffah neighborhood, northeast of Gaza City, including a pregnant woman who was expecting twins. 

Beit Hanoun Mayor Mohammad Nazek Al-Kafarna was one of the victims of the Israeli strike that hit the school on Thursday.

The Health Ministry said on Thursday that 1,163 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since Israel resumed intense bombing on March 18, bringing the overall death toll since the war began to 50,523.

The usurping entity accepted longstanding negotiation terms by the Hamas resistance group under a Gaza ceasefire, which began on January 19.

On March 18, however, Israel unilaterally broke the truce and resumed its relentless bombing of Gaza.

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Agencies
March 26,2025

New Delhi: Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday claimed that he was not being given a chance to speak in the House which was being run in a "non-democratic style", and said Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla had made "unsubstantiated" remarks about him.

Gandhi's remarks came after Birla asked him to follow the rules of procedure that members are expected to observe to uphold the dignity of the House. It was not immediately clear what was the reason for the Speaker to make the observation.

The former Congress president said the Speaker made remarks about him and then adjourned the House without giving him an opportunity to speak.

"The Speaker just got up and left. He did not allow me to speak a word. He was speaking about me, and I don't know what he said about me, all unsubstantiated. I said, 'let me speak as you have spoken about me', but he did not say a word and just left. He adjourned the House when there was no need of it," the former Congress president said.

About 70 Congress Lok Sabha MPs, including deputy leader of Lok Sabha Gaurav Gogoi, party general secretary KC Venugopal and party's whip in the Lok Sabha Manickam Tagore, met the Lok Sabha speaker and raised the "denial" of opportunity to Gandhi to speak in the House.

Speaking with reporters in Parliament House complex, Gandhi said there is a convention that the Leader of Opposition is allowed to speak, but whenever he gets up to speak, he is not allowed to speak.

"So, in what manner is this House being run? We are not being allowed to speak. I have not done anything, I was sitting quietly, I did not speak anything. In the last 7-8 days, I have not been allowed to speak," the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.

In a democracy, the opposition has a place, and the government has its own place but here there is no place for the opposition, he alleged.

Gandhi said he wanted to speak on Maha Kumbh last week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a statement on it but he was not allowed to speak.

"I wanted to state that it is good that Kumbh happened, and I wanted to speak about unemployment, but I was not allowed to speak. I don't know what thinking or approach does the Speaker have but the truth is we are not being allowed to speak. It (the House) is being run in a non-democratic style," Gandhi claimed.

Earlier, in his remarks, the Speaker said members are expected to conduct themselves in a manner that upholds the high standards and dignity of the House.

"Several instances have come to my notice where the conduct of members does not conform to the high standards," the Speaker said.

"In this House, father and daughter, mother and daughter, husband and wife have been members. In this context, I expect the Leader of the Opposition to conduct himself in accordance with Rule 349 that deals with rules to be observed by members in the House," the Speaker said.

"Especially, it is expected of the Leader of the Opposition to conduct himself as per the rules," the Speaker said.

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