When Rabri Devi, a former Bihar chief minister and wife of RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, had frankly said in May that she would launch both her sons in politics, she certainly meant it. The couple’s elder son announced on Saturday that he had indeed joined politics.
Tej Pratap, 24, a fledgling businessman in motorcycle sales, made his political debut noticeable by leading an unruly procession of the RJD’s student wing in Patna and excitedly vowing to uproot Bihar’s Nitish Kumar-led NDA government. The Yadav scion’s political entry happened the day his father summarily expelled from the RJD a young Bihari lawyer in Delhi for his unseemly protest at a programme of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
“I have stepped into politics. I and my younger brother, who has already been launched in politics, will now work together in politics,” said Tej Pratap to journalists as he led the procession from B.N. College to the Patna University campus.
While the procession ostensibly aimed at pressing for Central university status to PU, Mr Pratap severely criticised the government of JD(U) stalwart Nitish Kumar, the arch-rival of the RJD chief. “I have joined the agitation for granting Central university status to PU. I also demand that the Nitish Kumar government hold student union elections and eradicate the students’ problems. Girl students face the worst problems. There is no action even in cases of gangrape. We will throw out this government,” he said.
Mr Pratap, who has a lower profile than his younger brother Tejaswi, 20, a former IPL cricketer now studying in Delhi, opened a motorcycle sales agency called Lara — “La” for Lalu Prasad Yadav, “Ra” for Rabri Devi — in Bihar’s Aurangabad town in April. The agency is run by RJD leader Ajay Kumar Sinha while Pratap, still a student of political science at B.N. College, hones his flying skills at the Patna Flying Club.