Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav - the opposition's chief ministerial candidate - is teetering on the edge of a humiliating defeat from the family bastion of Raghopur in the 2025 Bihar election.
At 1 pm he was leading the Bharatiya Janata Party's Satish Kumar Yadav by just 585 votes
A defeat for Yadav would be a dramatic deveopment.
But even bigger would be the identity of his opponent because 15 years ago, in Raghopur, Satish Kumar delivered a powerful shock to the Rashtriya Janata Dal, defeating Lalu Yadav's wife, Rabri Devi.
So, who is the giant-killer threatening to repeat his feat?
Satish Kumar, 59, started his political career with the RJD.
An influential leader in the Yadav community - which accounts for around 15 per cent of the state's population - he switched to Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United in 2005 and was fielded from Raghopur. The first round, though, went to Rabri Devi; she won that poll by 25,000+ votes.
Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi (File).
2010 was the revenge year; Satish Kumar finished over 13,000 votes ahead.
He returned to defend his seat in 2015, only this time with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The switch didn't go as planned; Kumar finished second in the 2015 and 2020 polls, losing both times to Tejashwi Yadav and, in each case, getting less than 40 per cent of the votes.
2025, though, could be third time lucky.
Meanwhile, his individual race aside, Yadav and the Mahagathbandhan have been steamrolled.
The ruling BJP-JDU-led alliance is set for a landslide, eclipsing even Home Minister Amit Shah's prediction - which he made, twice, to NDTV - of 160 seats.
READ | Amit Shah Was Right. BJP-Led AllianceTo Sweep Bihar With 160+ Seats
Defeat for Tejashwi Yadav, a two-time ex-Deputy Chief Minister and, arguably, the biggest opposition leader in the state, will represent a catastrophic setback for the RJD.
And defeat for the Mahagathbandhan will undermine its core, and affect the larger Congress-led INDIA bloc, particularly ahead of an equally high-profile election next year - in Bengal.
It will also be viewed as another signal that all is not well in the Yadav clan, which in this election is also staring down a brother versus brother face-off. Tejashwi's disgruntled older brother, Tej Pratap, broke away from the family brand to start his own - the Janshakti Janta Dal.
The JJD leader - who had the option to go head-to-head against his brother - eventually settled for fielding a proxy. That person was Prem Kumar. Unsurprisingly, he was trounced.
READ | Tej Pratap Trails By Over 13,000 Votes, Is Number 4 In Mahua
But Tej Pratap did stand too - from the Mahua seat. He too, though, is likely to be trounced, with the seat going to the resurgent Lok Janshakti Party of BJP ally Chirag Paswan.
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