Tej Pratap Yadav may quit politics

Patna: Former Bihar minister and RJD leader Tej Pratap Yadav on Monday created a controversy by hinting at quitting politics.

The 29-year-old RJD MLA, who was a health minister in the Grand Secular Alliance government till July 2017 in a Facebook post, said that has been working under pressure while few party leaders are busy damaging his image publicly.

He said that his mother Rabri Devi ignored his complaints earlier regarding few RJD leaders who have been spreading rumours about him prompting him to consider “quitting”  politics.

“How can I work under so much pressure when there are few leaders from my party who have been trying to malign my image in my own assembly constituency? When I inform my mother and father about this they scold me. I can't do politics like this", Tej Pratap Yadav wrote this on a social media site.

According to him, he got the feedback regarding the issue when he visited his constituency on Sunday. He said, “Few people from my constituency approached me and said that one Om Prakash Yadav and MLC Subodh Rai have been meeting people and spreading rumours about me. They have been calling me mad and insane and even called me a slave of my wife. I cannot tolerate such kind of people in my party and I know how to crush these people but my mother and father are not ready to listen to me”.

Sources said that the controversial Facebook post was later deleted after family members and some senior party leaders intervened.

“Such kind of post on social media may create trouble for Tejashwi Yadav who has been trying to keep workers together in the absence of his father Lalu Yadav”, A senior RJD leader told this newspaper on Monday.

In June Tej Pratap Yadav had created a buzz with a tweet signalling his “retirement from politics”. In a tweet, he used references from Mahabharata and said that he wishes to hand over the throne of Hastinapur to Arjun (Tejashwi Yadav) and leave for Dwarika.

The reason he said was few RJD leaders who were worried that he may emerge as a kingmaker in Bihar like his father Lalu Yadav.  

His tweet had sparked speculations about growing rift between him and his younger brother Tejashwi Yadav.  Political analysts are of the opinion that Tej Pratap who recently got married may have given the statement out of desperation as “party members including few senior RJD leaders don’t take him seriously”.