Ghost of 2020 awaits Chirag Paswan in Bihar poll battlefield
LJP president Chirag Paswan (Image credit X Chirag Paswan)
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, March 19: In the run up to the poll date announcement for the Lok Sabha elections, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) president Chirag Paswan held strong public meetings in the traditional support base of the party founded by his father, former Union Minister Ramvilas Paswan. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was impressed, and onboarded Chirag Paswan as a rehabilitation within the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
The BJP national general secretary Vinod Tawde announced the seat adjustment arrangements for Bihar yesterday wherein his party would contest on 17 Lok Sabha seats, leaving 16 for the Janata dal (United), five for Chiraj Paswan-led LJP, and one each for Upendra Kushwaha and Jitan Ram Manjhi headed outfits. Union Minister Pashupati Kumar Paras, and his party, Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP), was abandoned on the high sea of politics by the BJP.
The stage is now set for an uncle-nephew electoral dual in the Hajipur parliamentary seat, which had been represented by Ramvilas Paswan for several years, including a few terms when he set world records for victory margins. Hajipur is the Paswan bastion, and a laboratory of the Dalit politics since late 1960s.
Paras had claimed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had divine attributes. He hoped against hope till the announcement of the seat adjustment pact that his ‘Bhakti’ for Modi will not go in vain. In an informal interaction with a few scribes, he is learnt to have said that the Paswan vote base is the largest in Bihar, and the BJP would be insulting the electoral constituency by not giving space to his party in the NDA seat plan for Bihar.
Paras is now in his 70s, and his nephew Chirag Paswan goes around with the trumpet of ‘Yuva Bihari’. The BJP may have said a goodbye to the setting sun of the Paswan politics in Bihar to welcome the rising star from the identity politics of the scheduled castes. But Paras has said that he would contest from Hajipur, and his differences with Chirag Paswan are irreconcilable.
Chirag Paswan claims that he’s ‘Hanuman’ of the BJP. But the ghost of 2020 may be waiting for him in the Bihar battleground. The political observers in Bihar are wondering if the state Chief Minister Nitish Kumar will grab the upcoming opportunity to ‘serve the revenge cold’ on ‘Yuva Bihari’ who had been accused by the JD (U) for scripting the defeat of the several of the candidates of the party in the 2020 Assembly elections.
Besides, the Paswan family is feuding. Paras and his nephew, Prince Raj, who is son of Ramchandra Paswan, have the political turf to defend. The Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress may be gleefully looking at an emerging opportunity to take sides in the family feud.
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