Tejashwi Yadav

Some Lesser-Known Facts About Tejashwi Yadav

• Tejashwi Yadav is an Indian Politician and the political heir of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo, Lalu Prasad Yadav. He is the youngest of the nine children of Lalu Yadav.

• Four months after Tejashwi’s birth in November 1989, his father, Lalu Yadav, was sworn in as the CM of Bihar for the first time.

• Tejashwi did his schooling from Delhi. A cricket enthusiast, Tejasvi Yadav passed class 8th and then dropped out of school to focus on making a career in cricket.

• He took part in a number of cricket tournaments in his schooling days. Also, he was the captain of his school cricket team. He made his under-15 debut for Delhi’s cricket team under the captaincy of Virat Kohli. ^[18]Business Standard After playing a few seasons for Delhi, he was selected in the Delhi’s under-19 cricket squad.

  

• Tejashwi Yadav, a middle-order right-handed batsman, was a part of the Delhi Daredevils’ squad from 2009 to 2012; however, he could never get a place in the team’s playing eleven.

  

• Tejashwi Yadav played 7 domestic matches in his entire cricket career. In those seven matches, he scored just 37 runs and took one wicket. ^[19]ESPN CricInfo

• Understanding that his cricket career was not taking off, Tejashwi Yadav decided to venture into politics. In 2010, he campaigned for his father, Lalu Yadav, for the first time, ahead of the 2010 Bihar Assembly poll.

• In 2015, at the age of 26, Tejashwi Yadav successfully contested and won his first election from the Raghopur Assembly constituency on the ticket of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD). In the election, RJD who was a part of Mahagathbandhan (RJD-INC-JDU) won 80 seats out of 243 and emerged as the single largest party in Bihar. Thereby, Tejashwi was appointed as the Deputy CM of Bihar. He received the public works, forestry, and environment department in the cabinet of CM Nitish Kumar.

• In 2016, Tejashwi Yadav introduced a WhatsApp number on which the public could send in their complaints related to damaged roads in their locality. The engineer who monitored the messages on the contact number said,
  

  Out of 47,000 messages received on the number, nearly 44,000 were personal messages proposing marriage to Tejashwi Yadav. Only 3,000 messages were related to road repair. The young women mistook the number as Tejaswi’s own and sent the personal messages.”

  Here is what Tejashwi had to say about it,

• He served as the Deputy CM of Bihar from 2015 to 2017. He was the youngest ever person to have chaired the post of a deputy CM.

• In 2017, a CBI case was registered against Tejashwi Yadav, Lalu Yadav, and Rabri Devi for a ‘land for hotel” scam of 2004. As the controversy grew bigger, Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) pulled back its support from Mahagathbandhan and formed a fresh government with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

• After the fall of the Mahagathbandhan government and the formation of the BJP-JD (U) government in Bihar, RJD’s 27 years old Tejashwi Yadav became the youngest ever leader of opposition in India.

• Prior to the 2020 Bihar Assembly election, almost all the exit polls predicted the victory of Mahagathbandhan, a coalition of JDU, INC, and many left parties, with Tejashwi Yadav as the CM candidate. However, after a neck and neck competition, Mahagathbandhan, with 110 seats, lost to National Democratic Alliance (NDA) who secured 125 seats and formed the government in Bihar. Tejashwi’s RJD emerged as the single-largest party in the election, bagging 75 seats. Also, Tejashwi Yadav won his Raghopur seat from Bihar’s Raghopur Assembly seat by a margin of 38000 votes. ^[20]The Print

• As per the data shared by My Neta, an open data depository website, Tejashwi Yadav has 11 criminal cases pending against him. ^[21]My Neta

• In May 2025, he criticised Tej for indecency after he uploaded a social media post claiming that he had been dating Anushka Yadav for the last 12 years. Tejashwi also supported Lalu‘s decision to expel him for six years from the RJD and break all relations. He, in a statement, said,
  

  As far as I am concerned, I neither like nor tolerate all this. Personal life should be separate. He is the elder one and has the right to take his own decisions. But Lalu ji has also made his thoughts clear through a tweet. He did what he thought was right. I came to know about this only through the media.”