The animosity between ‘chacha (uncle — Pashupati Kumar Paras)-bhatija (nephew — Chirag Paswan)‘ appears to have come in the way of the BJP’s efforts to achieve smooth seat-sharing among the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) allies in Bihar. Both Mr. Paras and Mr. Paswan have been claiming the Hajipur (reserved) Lok Sabha constituency as theirs to contest, and both refuse to budge on this point, sources said.
Bihar BJP leader and former State party president Mangal Pandey, along with the current State party chief and incumbent Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary, met State in-charge of the party Vinod Tawde, in Delhi on March 12 to break the ice between Mr. Paras and Mr. Paswan but, said party sources, “with no success so far”. “The party’s top leadership is in talk with alliance partners and very soon the seat sharing deal will be sealed,” Mr. Choudhary said after meeting Mr. Tawde.
Founded by Mr. Chirag Paswan’s late father Ram Vilas Paswan, the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) split in 2021 following a coup by Mr. Paras after the senior Paswan’s demise. The undivided LJP had won six seats in 2019 Lok Sabha election. Out of the six MPs, five sided with Mr. Paras, leaving Mr. Chirag Paswan to fend for his own political career.
Later, the LJP split into two factions — the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party led by Mr. Paras, and the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), led by Mr. Chirag Paswan.
Mr. Paras has been the Union Food Processing Industries Minister since 2021 and the sitting MP from Hajipur (reserved) seat, which was represented by his elder brother later Ram Vilas Paswan several times.
Mr. Chirag Paswan is the MP from the Jamui (reserved) seat in Parliament.
Both chacha and bhatija but continue their efforts to claim the late Ram Vilas Paswan’s political legacy. Mr. Chirag Paswan, party sources said, wants to field his mother Reena Paswan from the Hajipur seat in an apparent bid to unseat his uncle from Bihar’s political arena.
Mr. Chirag Paswan left the NDA alliance in 2020 over differences with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar but re-joined it when Mr. Kumar was part of the mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) government, which is now in Opposition after Mr. Kumar’s recent political volte face, the fifth time in a decade, to remain in power.
Mr. Chirag Paswan and Mr. Kumar were not on good terms while in the NDA coalition. The Janata Dal-United (JD-U), which Mr. Kumar heads, has been repeatedly saying that it’s up to the BJP to share seats and “speak to Chirag Paswan”.
Mr. Paras recently said it was “not possible” to forge any personal or familial alliance with Mr. Chirag Paswan.
Mr. Paswan, while addressing a public meeting in Vaishali district on March 10, said that “every political party wants me to be on its side” and suggested that he may “lean towards the one that offers me a better deal”, though he also emphasised in the meeting that his “alliance is solely with the people of Bihar”.
The BJP has reportedly offered six seats to Mr. Chirag Paswan, with the caveat that both uncle and nephew split three seats each between themselves.
Sources in the parties of both the leaders, though, told The Hindu that while they had both agreed to take three seats each, they were unwilling to relinquish their claim over the Hajipur (reserved) seat. The Hajipur seat had now become a real thorn for the BJP in its seat sharing arrangements among the NDA’s allies in Bihar, they said.
Several BJP leaders in Bihar, however, told the The Hindu that Mr. Paras and Mr. Paswan had no choice but to remain with the NDA. They maintained that it was only a matter of time before the party’s top leadership announced its final seat-sharing among the NDA’s allies in Bihar. This time, the BJP also has to look after two other allies — Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha and former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular).
The JD(U), meanwhile, is unwilling to take less than the 16 seats the party won in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Out of the total 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, the BJP and JD(U) had contested 17 seats each in the previous Lok Sabha election, leaving six seats for the LJP. The BJP and LJP had won all 17 and six seats they contested, respectively, while the JD(U) had won 16 seats. The NDA won a total of 39 seats, with the sole seat of Kishanganj won by the Congress party.
In the forthcoming Lok Sabha election, sources in the BJP said the party wants to contest 17 seats by giving 13 seats to the JD(U) and leaving 10 seats for the rest of its allies.
