New Delhi: The tables have turned against Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP) president Pashupati Kumar Paras, three years after he was picked up by the BJP and inducted into the Modi cabinet in 2021.
On Tuesday morning, Paras resigned from the Union Cabinet, a development that came after the BJP finalised seat-sharing with his nephew Chirag Paswan for the Lok Sabha polls.
In going ahead with Chirag’s LJP (Ram Vilas), the BJP left Paras and his party no seat for the Lok Sabha election. And now with Nitish Kumar in the NDA camp, any help from the Janata Dal (United) is out of question.
Paras kept his announcement of resignation short, but made it amply known that the BJP and Chirag would now be his targets.
“Yesterday, the NDA alliance announced the list of 40 candidates for Bihar Lok Sabha. Our party had five MPs and I worked with utmost sincerity. Injustice has been done with us and our party. Therefore, I resign from the post of Union Minister,” he said.
While the BJP will contest 17 of the total 40 parliamentary seats in Bihar, the JD(U) will field candidates in 16. The Rashtriya Lok Morcha headed by Upendra Kushwaha and the Jitan Ram Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha will contest one seat each.
The Lok Janashakti Party (Ram Vilas) got 5 seats of Vaishali, Hajipur, Samastipur, Jamui, and Khagaria, according to the seat-sharing pact announced Monday.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Vijay Kumar Sinha sought to play down the resignation, saying elders should be giving blessings to Chirag Paswan.
“The BJP showed regards for Paras in 2021 by rewarding him with a cabinet minister post. The BJP will do so in future too. Generational change is happening everywhere; it has changed so many faces…So like elders in the family, he should give blessing to Chirag Paswan,” Sinha told ThePrint.
JD(U) spokesperson Neeraj Kumar advised Paras to be respectful towards “the prime minister since he kept him in the Union cabinet for three years”.
For now, the RLJP has not played its cards after the snub from the BJP. “The party will soon convene a meeting in Patna to decide its future course of action. As of now, we are part of the NDA. We have not left the NDA yet,” party spokesperson Sharan Agrawal told ThePrint.
Paras can bear a grudge towards Nitish who “used” him to settle scores with Chirag Paswan by engineering a split in June 2021 in the LJP. This was after Chirag had cut votes to bring down the JD(U) to third place after the RJD and the BJP in the 2020 Bihar election.
That Paras’s anger is more at the BJP for siding with Chirag Paswan in the latest round of family feud between uncle and nephew is clear through his resignation.
Paras is in touch with the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan in Bihar and he will fight against the NDA in Bihar, sources in the LJP hinted. The RLJP chief has announced that he will not leave Hajipur where Chirag has announced his candidature on Monday.
But there is little space for Paras to manoeuvre as two of his MPs — Veena Devi (Vaishali) and Choudhary Mehboob Ali Kaiser (Khagaria) — have shifted to the camp of Chirag Paswan. Veena Devi is likely to be fielded from Vaishali again, the sources said.
The Paswan community — which stood solidly behind late LJP chief and Chirag’s father Ram Vilas Paswan — comprises 6 per cent of the voting population in Bihar.
“The BJP going for Chirag was a natural course as he not only demonstrated his ability in the 2020 assembly election but also proved his mettle through the Ashirwad Yatra showing that people are behind him, not Paras,” a BJP central leader told ThePrint.
“He always spoke about how his uncle (Paras) betrayed his father and left the family midway for power. It was Ram Vilas who established his brother Paras in politics, and the people have sympathy for Chirag. … It was Chirag who used to oversee the election of his father and other organisational work,” the BJP leader added.
A politician for over four decades, Paras largely stayed under the shadow of his brother Ram Vilas Paswan. But he came into his own after the elder brother died in October 2020.
Paras walked out of the LJP with four MPs which triggered a power struggle that ended with the ouster of Chirag Paswan from the party in 2021. Paras and Chirag then went on to head the RLJP and the LJP (Ram Vilas), respectively.
Starting as a Janata Party MLA from Alauli in 1978, Paras represented the assembly segment seven times and went on to serve as a minister in Lalu and Nitish governments. .
“Ram Vilas gave him autonomy to run the organisation in the state; he was the point person to contact Paswan for negotiations as the LJP chief was focused more in central politics. He was the messenger for Ram Vilas who trusted him as seen in Paras getting the poll ticket from Hajipur,” another BJP leader told ThePrint.
“Paras, too, acknowledged Ram Vilas’s contribution in his political career and worked as a gateway between Nitish Kumar and his brother. Nitish was never fond of Ram Vilas. When Paras privately told Ram Vilas after the 2005 assembly polls to back Nitish in government formation, Ram Vilas had other plans. Even whenever Ram Vilas joined hands with Lalu, Paras obeyed his elder brother’s decision and never crossed the Laxman Rekha,” the BJP leader added.
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Options before Paras
Given the current situation, Paras may have to take the electoral plunge in an alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to prove his mettle like Kushwaha and Manjhi for proving that the Dalit and the Maha Dalit voters are solidly behind him.
When Paras announced Friday last that he would be contesting from Hajipur, he had sensed that his days in the NDA were numbered when Bihar ministers and BJP leaders Mangal Pandey and Samrat Choudhary met him to apprise the developing situation in Patna.
Chirag’s rising stock was amply clear in the meeting with BJP national president J.P. Nadda on 13 March
It is believed that the BJP has suggested Paras to merge his party with Chirag but neither the nephew nor the uncle was willing to repair ties. The BJP is said to have offered Paras to enter the Raj Bhavan in any NDA-ruled state, an offer that he turned down.
“Chirag always supported the prime minister as he did not field candidates in the 2022 assembly bypoll and campaigned for the BJP without any pre-condition. He did not press for Nawada, a LJP stronghold, from the BJP and was ready for only five seats instead of six. These factors led to the BJP awarding Chirag for his role as a truthful partner,” a Bihar BJP leader told ThePrint.
“Chirag left Nawada because of strongman Suraj Bhan Singh, a trusted aide of his father who sided with Paras during the LJP split. Suraj Bhan’s younger brother Chandan Kumar is the MP from Nawada. As it is a Bhumihar dominated seat, Chirag willingly left Nawada seat for the BJP,” he added.
“The Paswan voters’ sympathy is with Chirag. He has age in his side, more amenable and practical. For the BJP, a united LJP would have suited but the party made its decision keeping future politics in mind,” another BJP leader told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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