NITISH DOES A JOB ON TEJASWI

In the 2020 Bihar assembly election, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and its young chief, Tejaswi Yadav, came tantalisingly close to forming a government, missing the mark by just 12 seats. The wave of support was largely sparked by a single, resonant promise: one million jobs.

- By Amitabh Srivastava

Fast forward five years, and as Bihar braces for another electoral battle later this year, chief minister Nitish Kumar is looking to appropriate Tejaswi's script. Full-page newspaper advertisements are already out with the slogan 'Rojgar matlab Nitish sarkar (Employment means Nitish government)', alongside images of the CM distributing appointment letters at public events. Most recently, on February 8, Nitish handed appointment letters to 1,007 new agricultural department employees in Patna. Days earlier, over 6,000 junior engineers had received similar letters.