Tejashwi Yadav celebrates By-poll victory as Dalits in his constituency are attacked.

Recently held elections, from Karnataka to the West Bengal panchayat elections to the by polls in various states, have shown shocking results. While BJP emerged as the single largest party in Karnataka and the second largest party in TMC and CPI (M) dominated West Bengal, the media chose to focus on only the by poll results which mostly went in the opposition’s favour. More so in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, while the SP-BSP jointly fought Kairana by polls, they succeeded in winning by a very thin margin. By polls in Bihar were fought on the Jokihat Assembly seat by Janata Dal-United. BJP had supported the JDU by not fielding any candidate from the seat. The ruling JDU suffered loss at the hands of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) which is led by Tejashwi Yadav, son of the convicted ex-CM Lalu Prasad Yadav. The left leaning media houses and reporters left no stone unturned to hail Tejashwi as the future politician and a great leader after the election results were declared. These leftist houses and their representatives forgot to take into account that while RJD and Tejashwi Yadav were celebrating the win at Jokihat Assembly seat, Dalits were being tortured in Tejaswi Yadav’s constituency.

According to media reports, goons attacked houses of 15 Dalit families in Malikpur village in Bihar’s Raghopur, Raghopur comes under Vaishali district in Bihar and is the constituency of the new star of Bihar politics, Tejashwi Yadav. Fifteen Dalit houses were attacked following a land dispute which escalated yesterday. Reportedly, Raghopur is a Yadav dominated region and for long atrocities committed on Dalits have been reported from this area. Dalit families whose homes were torched are homeless and afraid of their lives, property of almost Rs 10 lakhs was destroyed owing to the torching which engulfed some nearby shops too. No offer of help has come from Tejashwi Yadav till date. It is unlikely that any help is going to come from Tejashwi considering he himself belongs to the Yadav community.

The Dalits have alleged that this is not the first time such harassment has taken place at the hands of the Yadav community who are supported by the leaders from that area. According to reports, JDU leader Ashok Choudhary is the only one who has reached out to the victim Dalit families in Raghopur and has offered all help from the state government. What is surprising is how Tejashwi Yadav has chosen to remain silent on this matter till now, is it a tacit approval of the atrocities committed by people from his community?

People still remember the Jungle-raj which prevailed in Bihar under the Lalu Prasad Yadav government. Rampant corruption, loot, kidnappings had become the order of the day. Tejashwi Yadav might prove to be the successor to Lau Yada, he is, after all, his son and hails his father’s ‘mis’management. Intellectual journalists like Saba Naqvi took to Twitter to praise Tejashwi Yadav, without caring about the atrocities he is tacitly allowing to take place in his own constituency.

Maybe she did know about all that had happened in Bihar or chose to stay silent in order to suit her narrative, we don’t know for sure. But one thing is for certain, if RJD under Tejashwi Yadav comes back in power in Bihar it might lead to the same caste-based politics coming to the state. Progress of the state will be lost and all hopes for any further development too with it. RJD and the entire opposition with them have always played this game of shying away from discussions of communal violence which take place under them. RJD and Tejashwi Yadav’s sham needs to be called out and questioned aggressively if Bihar hopes to get out of the casteist-communal quagmire.