RJD's dismal show in election won't hurt Tejashwi, to continue leading party: Sources

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) on Tuesday ruled out the possibility of Lalu Yadav's son Tejashwi giving up the reins of the party after RJD's dismal show in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election, sources said. It is to be noted that the RJD had failed to win even a single seat out of 40 at stake in Bihar.

Sources said that the RJD is not perturbed by the drubbing in Lok Sabha election and instead of asking Tejashwi to step down as de facto leader of RJD in Lalu Yadav's absence the RJD-led opposition alliance has given its mandate to project the 29-year-old leader as its chief ministerial candidate in the assembly elections next year.

A two-day meeting was called by RJD on Wednesday to review the party's worst performance in Lok Sabha poll since its formation in 1997. However, on the first day of the meeting, all the 19 RJD candidates who contested and lost election termed the results as a "conspiracy" and formed a committee to look into the matter. Sources said that the RJD will discuss the results with other allies including Congress on Thursday after which the RJD would call a meeting of its MLAs. It is expected that similar resolutions would be passed at the meeting of legislators too.

Meanwhile, Tejashwi's elder borther Tej Pratap Yadav on Tuesday backed his younger brother and said that those who don't like Tejashwi's leadership can leave the RJD. Tej stressed that it wrong to blame Tejashwi for grand alliance's losses in Bihar. "I have written to my dear brother, telling him that victory and defeat are part and parcel of life. But running away is not the solution; we should now stop blaming each other for the defeat and start thinking about how we can drag the enemy out of our homes," Tej Pratap said.