Tejashwi Yadav becomes father, RJD celebrates

Jubilations erupted in the RJD camp on Monday as news spread that Tejashwi Yadav, the party's de facto leader and the deputy chief minister of Bihar, has become a father.

Yadav, who has stayed back in Delhi by the side of his wife Rajshree after an interrogation by the CBI last weekend, broke the news on his Twitter handle and also shared a picture of himself holding the baby girl.

Yadav was on March 25 quizzed by the Central Bureau of Investigation for more than eight hours, while the Enforcement Directorate questioned his MP sister Misa Bharti for over six hours, in connection with the railways land-for-jobs scam case.

Interestingly, while delivering a speech inside the state assembly last week, the Deputy CM, who is in his early 30s, had said he wished that his firstborn child be a daughter.

In north India, which is largely patrilinear, most families have traditionally wished for sons to the extent that there have been cases of infanticides of baby girls. Yadav's statement thus came as a welcome one.

His elder brother Tej Pratap Yadav was all smiles as he distributed sweets on the Vidhan Sabha premises in Patna, gladly telling everyone that he was now a "bade Papa".

"Laxmi has arrived in our family during the auspicious festival of Navaratri. Now all our woes shall be over," said Tej Pratap Yadav, a minister who has always been more comfortable with religion than the rough and tumble of politics.

Celebrations were also seen at the party’s Bir Chand Patel Marg office, barely a few hundred metres from the assembly, where RJD workers indulged in some merry-making, temporarily banishing the anxiety arising out of the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate cracking down on the family of party supremo Lalu Prasad.