THE PASWAN FACTOR

THE YOUNG PASWAN SCION IS SEEKING TO CARVE A SPACE FOR HIMSELF IN REGIONAL POLITICS, AND IS UNWILLING TO CONCEDE THE LJP’S SHARE OF SEATS TO NITISH AND THE JD(U)

- AMITABH SRIVASTAVA

Three days after BJP president J.P. Nadda met Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar in Patna on September 12, apparently to work out a seatsharing arrangement, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief Chirag Paswan also reached out to Nadda for a “late night meeting” in New Delhi. No one knows what transpired, but Chirag is believed to have asked the BJP chief that LJP be allowed to contest the 42 seats it did in 2015 as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). With Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) returning to the NDA fold in 2017, Chirag wants to ensure his party is not shortchanged to accommodate the JD(U) in the upcoming election to the 243-member Bihar assembly.

Again, on September 20—just two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while inaugurating a slew of railway projects in Bihar on September 18, endorsed Nitish Kumar by saying, “Nitishji jaisa sahyogi ho to kya kuchh sambhav nahin hai (with Nitish by your side, nothing is impossible)—Chirag wrote a letter to LJP workers, saying Bihar was being run according to the ‘Saat Nishchay’ programme the JD(U) evolved as part of the mahagathbandhan with Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and the Congress in 2015. And that Chirag was working on a ‘Bihar First, Bihari First’ model of development for the state. It was an emotional appeal to the cadre at a time when his father Ram Vilas Paswan, the tallest Dalit leader in the state, was in intensive care in a Delhi hospital, though reportedly for a “routine health check-up”.