Union minister Paswan may enter Bihar poll fray, his party indicates

THe Lok Janshakti company ( ram down Vilas) is potential to do a formal proposition to its chief Chirag Paswan to contest the upcoming assembly polls in Bihar, with lawmaker and party’s state in-charge Arun Bharti urging the Union minister to contest the state elections from an “unreserved” seat.It comes weeks after Paswan, who is the minister for food processing industries, expressed his intent to focus on Bihar politics. Bharti, who is the brother-in-law of the party chief, said the LJP(RV) workers want Paswan to contest from a general category seat if he does decide to fight the assembly polls due in October-November instead of a constituency reserved for the Scheduled Castes, a path often chosen by leaders from the Dalit community. “Our party national president Chirag Paswan always says that his politics is Bihar-centric and his vision ‘Bihar first, Bihari first’ is a resolution for a developed and self-reliant Bihar. This is possible only when he himself stays in Bihar and leads the organisation,” Bharti, the Lok Sabha MP from Jamui, said in a post in Hindi on X.He said the people of Bihar want Paswan to play a bigger role in the state politics, adding that party workers also feel he should contest the elections not from a reserved seat, but from a general seat — “so that the message goes out that he is now ready to lead the entire Bihar, and not just one section.”Bharti further said that the party’s state executive panel, which met a few days back, endorsed Paswan’s desire to contest the upcoming assembly elections.The LJP(RV), which is a key constituent of the ruling BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre as well as in Bihar, galvanised into action mode after Paswan shared the dais with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a public meeting in Rohtas on May 30. Party insiders said the national executive was hurriedly convened at Bikramganj soon after the departure of PM Modi for New Delhi, and unanimously passed a resolution, urging Paswan to contest the state elections.The move by the LJP(RV) is also being seen as pressure-building tactics by the party ahead of the seat-sharing talks among the constituents of the NDA, also comprising chief minister Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United), former CM Jitan Ram Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) and former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha.Paswan, in an interview to a media channel, on Sunday said he had left his plans to contest the assembly elections entirely to his party. “If the party wants, I am ready to contest the Assembly elections,” he added.Another senior LJP(RV) leader, however, said there are a lot of issues to be resolved in the NDA in Bihar before letting Paswan take a plunge into the state electoral politics. “First of all, the seat-sharing formula among the NDA constituents needs to be finalised. As per our standing in the Lok Sabha, we expect to contest from 30 seats under the alliance,” the leader said, requesting anonymity, adding that the party chief recently met Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and deputy CM Vijay Kumar Sinha in this regard.Paswan met Nitish Kumar in Patna on May 19 and later told reporters that there is no vacancy currently in Bihar for the post of chief minister, exuding confidence that the incumbent CM will continue to lead an NDA government after the upcoming assembly polls. In the 2020 assembly polls, it was the Paswan-led party, the then undivided LJP, that had played a spoiler for Kumar-led JD(U). Paswan’s decision to walk out of the NDA and put up its candidates mostly against the JD(U) in the previous polls relegated the JD(U) relegated to the third position with its lowest tally of 43 seats in the 243-member assembly.Though Paswan’s party could also win only one seat and later suffered a split but has since recovered its ground and won all five Lok Sabha seats it contested in the last general elections.Buttressing the party’s wish to contest more seats in the upcoming polls, another LJP (RV) leader pointed out that the party had fielded its candidates on 42 seats in alliance with the BJP in 2015. It had then won two seats.“There are too many slips between the cup and the lips for Chirag Paswan. The Janata Dal (United) does not have a good image about him. It had lost many seats owing to the triangular fight triggered by LJP(RV), which chose to contest the 2020 state polls alone. Although it won only one seat, LJP(RV) finished second on nine seats out of 137 it had contested and bagged a sizable number of votes to engineer defeat of the JD(U) contestants,” political analyst Ramashankar Arya said.