Tejashwi Yadav backs SP-BSP alliance, signals RJD will stay with Congress in Bihar

Two days after the BSP’s Mayawati and the SP’s Akhilesh Yadav unveiled their tie-up for the 2019 general election, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, son of party founder Lalu Prasad, welcomed the tie-up. He did not say whether the RJD would join it, but indicated that his party would stay with the Congress in Bihar.

Visit to Lucknow

Tejashwi said he felt compelled to travel from Patna to Lucknow to congratulate the Uttar Pradesh leaders. Asked about the Congress in Bihar, given that the SP-BSP combine had left it out in Uttar Pradesh, he said, “The Congress has been with us from early on.” He said the priority was defeating the BJP and repeated that the RJD was with the Congress. On Sunday he had called on Mayawati and wished her a happy birthday.

Attack on the BJP

According to party sources, Tejashwi said the country was under an undeclared emergency under BJP rule. He said the alliance Lalu Prasad had envisioned had become a reality thanks to Akhilesh, and predicted that the BJP would lose nearly 100 seats across Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. During his visit to Mayawati he had also forecast a whitewash of the BJP, and he cited recent by-election results as a sign of its coming defeat.

He said farmers, labourers and businessmen shared a collective anger because the BJP had raised big hopes without delivering. He described the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate as the BJP’s alliance partners rather than independent agencies, and said his father was in jail because Prime Minister Narendra Modi saw him as a threat. He added that the BJP had begun targeting him in 2005, when he was barely 13. Lalu Prasad was convicted in fodder scam cases in January 2018.

Akhilesh’s response

Akhilesh Yadav said Tejashwi’s congratulations would convince people that the alliance was firm, and that the whole country was pleased with the SP-BSP tie-up. Asked who should be the alliance’s choice for prime minister, he did not respond; previously he had said he would support his father, Mulayam Singh Yadav.

What happened next

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election the BJP won 303 of 543 seats and the Congress 52.

See also: Rashtriya Janata Dal · Samajwadi Party

Originally published on 14 January 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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