NITISH Kumar’s betrayal of his partner RJD — again — to stake claim to form a government with the BJP is a test of the leadership of the RJD’s young heir Tejashwi Yadav, who came into his own only in the 2020 Assembly elections, with the phasing out of Lalu Prasad, his ailing father and Nitish’s contemporary who has perhaps seen the JD(U) supremo do this enough times to not be fazed.

For those who have been seeing Tejashwi trying to fill the large shoes of Lalu, the 34-year-old has shown the political dexterity he displayed in the last Assembly elections when he was credited with leading the RJD to single-largest party. In the days leading up to Nitish’s revolt Sunday, Tejashwi, who also lost his deputy chief ministership in the process, warded off pressure from several party MLAs who wanted him to stake claim to form the government by virtue of the RJD still being the single-largest party in the Assembly, with 79 MLAs in the 243-member House.

He is said to have outrightly rejected the suggestion and said his party would “rather go to the people and tell them what we did during the one-and-a-half-year tenure (2022 till now) of the Mahagathbandhan government”.

In his first remarks after the developments of Sunday, Tejashwi said the JD(U) will be “finished in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls”, while describing Nitish as a “respectable” but “tired” leader. The RJD leader also warned the BJP that its new ally did not like to share “credit” with allies.

“Nitish Kumar seems to have a problem with me getting the credit for many achievements of our government. It should ring alarm bells for the BJP,” quipped Tejashwi, adding that he had “made” Nitish work towards fulfilling the RJD’s 10 lakh jobs election promise.

This was another sign that the RJD is set to position Tejashwi as the “development man”, putting a distance between him and his father’s regime, largely qualified as “jungle raj”. On Sunday, Bihar woke up to a full-page advertisement in local dailies by the RJD apart from a social media campaign crediting him for the development in the state, particularly in working towards the 10 lakh jobs promise. “It is about taking credit for creating four lakh jobs in Bihar in a brief period of one-and-a-half years. Nitish was forced to adopt our 2020 slogan of providing 10 lakh jobs in the state despite criticising it in the run-up to the Assembly polls asking where the money would come from,” RJD spokesperson Mritunjay Tiwari said.

The advertisement in the dailies on Sunday “thanked” Tejashwi for “fulfilling his promises” by “providing four lakh jobs”. “You did what you promised and you alone can fulfill more promises,” it said, in Hindi. The advertisement also listed other “achievements” of the RJD like the caste-based survey carried out by the Mahagathbandhan government, raising of the job quota for OBCs, EBCs and SCs from 50% to 60%, the provision of state government employee status to over 3.5 lakh teachers, “improvement” in education and healthcare, construction of new roads, bridges and bypasses, introduction of a new tourism policy and an increase in tourist influx.

Road construction, education, health and tourism departments were held by RJD leaders in the outgoing Mahagathbandhan government. Tejashwi posted on X an interview of his to PTI underlining this, saying that the RJD’s goals always were jobs, justice, education, making people’s lives better, and Bihar’s development. Going on to list the achievements mentioned in the RJD advertisement, he said: “We have 79 MLAs, they (the JD-U) have 45, the ministers were ours, the departments were ours, the work was ours, why should we not take credit?”

Tejashwi added that “khela (the game) had only begun now”, that there was a lot more to come, and that the RJD would keep its cards close to its chest. He also pointed out that while Nitish keeps talking about running a government on “Karpoori Thakur’s principles”, he had joined hands with the same party (Jana Sangh / BJP) that had opposed him.

An RJD leader said that the party would be taking the social justice plank that has been its base to the realm of economic justice. “The 2020 Assembly poll results showed that with our 10 lakh jobs slogan we expanded our social base and added youth across caste lines. Now, we will make voters aware of what we have done in recent times at the panchayat level. This time, we will not allow Nitish to run away with the credit and will also not disturb his government while waiting for him to falter on his own. He cannot blame us this time,” the leader said.

In a bid to increase its supporter base beyond the RJD’s traditional Yadav-Muslim voters, the party will shortly plan tours for Tejashwi where he will talk about these “achievements” and tell the people how the outgoing deputy CM is the “new development man” of Bihar.