RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav’s younger son Tejashwi, known to many cricket-loving youth as a “non-playing player” in the IPL’s earlier editions, is set to reinvent himself as the party’s “youth icon” in a bid to boost its sagging support-base among Bihar’s youth.
The 21-year-old former IPL cricketer, whose political debut happened with a few speeches during the RJD’s campaigns for the 2010 Bihar Assembly polls, will launch the party’s “Yuva Jan Samarthan Yatra” statewide from April 20 hoping to connect more youth to the party.
The political scion’s venture, RJD leaders expect, will prove a valuable campaign ahead of the party’s proposed “Parivartan Rally” slated for May 15 in Patna’s Gandhi Maidan.
Tejashwi, who has a bigger public profile than his elder brother Tej Pratap, 25, appeared both confident and concerned as he addressed a seminar on the present condition of education and students’ future in Patna on Sunday. In a speech interspersed with nuggets of statistics, he sought to paint the education scenario in Bihar under the Nitish Kumar regime as a dark canvas and vowed to work towards improving it.
RJD leaders see in Tejashwi a “youth icon” in Bihar having the potential to transform the party’s decidedly low appeal among college-going youth. They expect his IPL past, debonair looks and the very identity as Lalu Prasad Yadav’s son to work for him and the party in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and the Bihar Assembly polls in 2015.
“He is undoubtedly a youth icon admired by countless young people. His commitments to ensure a better future for Bihar’s students was on ample display,” said RJD spokesman Randhir Yadav.