In 2012, when the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) politician and veteran leader Lalu Prasad Yadav’s son Tejashwi Yadav was playing cricket, Sanjay Yadav was working in an a multinational corporation. They met several times through their mutual friends and after the meetings, the duo decided that Tejashwi Yadav will give up cricket and get into politics full-fledged. Concurrently Tejashwi asked his friend Sanjay to quit his job and join RJD.
Sanjay Yadav is now a political adviser to Tejashwi Yadav and a poll strategist for Rashtriya Janta Dal.
Sanjay was widely credited with the RJD’s performance in the assembly election in Bihar in 2015. RJD won in 80 seats in 2015 and emerged as the single largest party in Bihar. In 2010, RJD won only in 22 seats.
Sanjay who has an MSc in computer science from Bhopal University and an MBA from Indraprastha University-Delhi, now stays at 10 Circular Road, home to two former chief ministers Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi.
The 36 year old is originally from Mahendragarh in Haryana and shifted base to Patna in 2012.
Now, Sanjay Yadav is busy in designing the campaign for the Grand Alliance and its chief ministerial candidate Tejashwi Yadav ahead of the 2020 assembly elections.
Politics of reservations and representations
In the run-up to the 2015 assembly polls in Bihar, Sanjay Yadav rushed to party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav one morning to show him Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat’s statement on the need to review the reservation policy. Lalu commented on saffron leader’s statement and asked Sanjay to post it on Lalu’s Twitter handle. Since then, the vocal OBC leader continuously used RSS chief’s anti-reservation remarks to attack the BJP.
Responding to Bhagwat’s comment, Lalu had tweeted: ” Tum aarakshan khatam karne ki kahte ho. Hum isse abaadi ke anupaat mein badhayenge. Mai ka doodh piya hain to khatam karke dikhao, kiski kitni takat hain pata lag jayega” (You talk of ending reservations. We will increase it in proportion to the population. I dare you to go ahead and stop it, we shall see who is stronger).
In Sanjay’s words, Bhagwat’s comment was a trump card for the RJD.
According to Sanjay Yadav, RJD does the politics of the people who had no voice or representation in the country for ages and it doesn’t do the politics of the strong, the well-resourced and over-represented.
During the campaigns in 2019 general elections, RJD was more vocal against EWS reservation.
“By providing reservation in the name of economic status, they made a mockery of the very narrative of reservations. Moreover, the constitution was amended in the name of reservation without any report of any commission, research paper or survey,” Sanjay said in an interview with Caravan.
Sanjay even said when RJD will be in power, it will implement reservations in conformity with the caste-wise composition of country’s population.
Social Media
There was no website of RJD when Tejashwi and Sanjay started interacting. The former MNC employee Sanjay helped create the RJD’s website. Tejashwi became active on social media mostly Facebook and Twitter. The party patron Lalu Prasad Yadav also came on Twitter in 2014.
Sanjay Yadav is handling the microblogging accounts of Lalu and Tejashwi.
With 5.4 million followers as on date, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav is now numero uno among country’s vocal anti-BJP politicians on the microblogging site.
“Dear friends! While in jail, My Twitter handle shall be operated by my office in consultation with family. I shall speak my mind through visitors. The fight to preserve the Constitution and protect the rights of vulnerable groups shall go on,” Lalu Yadav tweeted on 25 December 2017.
Tejashwi Yadav has 2.6 million followers on Twitter.
