INDIA bloc’s worst show yet: Tejashwi faces leadership questions after Bihar debacle

The 2025 Bihar Assembly election has been extremely disappointing for the INDIA Alliance and a personal setback for Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav.

This election has turned out to be one of the RJD’s worst performances. The party has not only fared poorly, but Tejashwi Yadav himself is struggling to retain his seat from Raghopur.

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Tejashwi, the alliance’s chief ministerial candidate, may not even secure the position of Leader of the Opposition. According to the latest trends, the RJD is leading in only 24 seats. At least 25 MLAs are required for the post, as the Bihar Assembly has a total of 243 members.

The issue is not merely about the Leader of the Opposition’s chair, it also raises questions about Tejashwi Yadav’s future as the most acceptable face of the Opposition in Bihar.

Senior leaders have already begun questioning his leadership. Tejashwi’s over-dependence on RJD’s Sanjay Yadav and his strained relationship with Congress Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru are also under scrutiny.

His brother Tej Pratap Yadav and sister Rohini Acharya had earlier raised objections to Sanjay Yadav’s growing influence over party affairs. Now, veteran RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui has echoed similar concerns.

In his first reaction to the election results, Siddiqui said, “The affairs of Bihar should be decided by the leaders of Bihar,” a direct criticism of Sanjay Yadav, who hails from Haryana, as well as AICC Bihar in-charge Krishna Allavaru.

Former Bihar Congress president Akhilesh Singh also demanded answers from Sanjay Yadav and Krishna Allavaru. Reacting to the poll results, he said, “I do not understand the election outcome, because huge crowds were gathering at our rallies. Now that these results have come, we will all try to understand together how this happened.”

Targeting both Krishna Allavaru and Sanjay Yadav, Singh added that they were the ones who prepared the entire election strategy. “Since these are the results, they should be the ones to answer,” he said.