LJP episode could queer BJP's Dalit outreach in Bihar

It is also Nitish Kumar's message to BJP leaders to show him more respect

Chirag Paswan's bungalow at 12 Janpath in Lutyens Delhi is 12 minutes' walk from the residence of his "backstabber" uncle, Pashupati Kumar Paras, who lives at 18 Rajendra Prasad Road. But, piquantly, only half that distance separates Chirag Paswan's house with BJP chief JP Nadda's at 7B, Motilal Nehru Marg.

The widening space between uncle and nephew and the younger man's proximity with the BJP leadership went beyond the symbolic after Chirag Paswan's father, Ram Vilas Paswan, passed away in October 2020.

Since his father's death, Chirag Paswan did not walk or drive the 950-metres that separate Paras' bungalow from his and expected his elderly uncle to bridge the widening gulf between the two. Instead, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, sitting in Patna, exploited the estrangement between Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) 's leading lights to consolidate his position within the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.

In 2014, Ram Vilas Paswan, the LJP's founder and Chirag Paswan's father, credited his actor-turned-politician son for convincing him to ally with Narendra Modi-led BJP for the Lok Sabha polls.

Read more: Betrayal, battle and blame in Chirag's dictionary as LJP internal feud escalates

When his followers praised him for his gumption to ditch the Congress-led UPA to join the BJP-led NDA months before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Paswan senior told them it wasn't his decision but his son's who understood the pulse of the people better.

Except for the 2015 Bihar Assembly polls, the switch kept the party in good stead in both the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. As a result, the LJP found representation in the Lok Sabha and Paswan senior a berth in the union cabinet.

Paswan senior had his ups and downs with Modi. Someone who went to bed late, he found it inconvenient, at least in the initial months of Modi's first term, that the PM phoned him at the crack of down to take stock.

But Paswan was also often the only minister from among the allies, and apart from Arun Jaitley in the BJP, the PM would turn to seek advice in the meetings of the union cabinet. It was also Paswan, or so he would tell some of us, who convinced the PM to make a statement on the attacks on Dalits in 2016.

Not hard political realities, but heartwarming stories of Modi's respect for Paswan senior possibly convinced 38-year-old Chirag Paswan, born and raised in Lutyens Delhi, that the BJP leaders had his interest close to their hearts.

Unlike his father, who always kept cordial relations with Nitish Kumar, Chirag Paswan followed the BJP's script in the Bihar Assembly polls by fielding his party's candidates against Kumar-led Janata Dal (United). As a result, the LJP's vote share contributed to the JD(U)'s losses on 29-seats. It relegated the JD(U) to the number three position in the Assembly. Rival Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and JD(U)'s ally BJP outscored Kumar's party by 30-seats each.

Chirag Paswan did not anticipate that Kumar could return as the Bihar CM. He would announce during the election campaign that the next government in Patna would be a BJP-LJP coalition. The election results proved that Paswan senior's confidence in his son's ability to read the political temperature was misplaced.

More troublingly for his supporters, Chirag Paswan failed to appreciate the compulsion of his father's decisions since he founded LJP in the year 2000 to enable the survival of the fledgling outfit. Neither did Chirag Paswan understand the political economy of Bihar – the precarious existence of the communities that support the party and the need of the party's rank and file to find support from the state government and lower bureaucracy in the state's districts, towns and villages.

Kumar has held the reins of power in Bihar nearly continuously since 2005. He has appointed much of the bureaucracy in the last 17-years, which heeds his instructions. The BJP's say in decision making, particularly after Sushil Modi's exit, is feeble despite its better numbers in the Assembly. Predictably, LJP's leaders in Bihar, who had fought against Kumar's JD(U), soon faced obstacles in their dealings with the state government.

If the BJP used Chirag Paswan to cut Kumar's wings in the Assembly polls, the Bihar CM has now turned the tables to use Paswan's party to bolster his claim as the strongest BJP ally who should now get its pound of flesh.

The BJP saved some blushes when Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla moved quickly to recognize the five LJP MP led by Paras as a separate block, nipping in the bud the possibility of them joining the JD (U). Contrast the Speaker's alacrity in this episode with the delay in resolving the Trinamool Congress' plea to disqualify its two MPs who have crossed over to the BJP.

The LJP's five MPs joining the JD(U) would have increased its strength to 21, four more than BJP's 17-seats from Bihar, strengthening JD(U)'s demand for a more significant presence in the union council of ministers.

However, the LJP episode comes on the heels of several moves, which sources say, have been made at Kumar's behest since May 2, the day results to the five Assembly polls were announced and where the BJP performed poorly.

On May 24, Kumar's ally Jitan Ram Manjhi, who heads the Hindustan Awam Morcha, wondered in a tweet, which he later deleted, why death certificates of coronavirus victims do not have the PM's photograph when certificates given to those receiving Covid-19 jabs have his picture. Another ally, Vikashsheel Insaan Party (VIP) 's Mukesh Sahni, has taken to hobnob with the RJD leadership. JD (U) vice president Upendra Kushwaha praised RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav on his birthday.

There is speculation in the Bihar media that Kumar is in contact with 10 of the 19 Congress legislators and needs the support of another three to engineer a defection. Since November, Kumar has increased the JD(U) 's strength in the Assembly from 42 to 45 by employing similar outreach.

The developments dovetail into speculation about the expansion of the union cabinet. Currently, only one NDA partner has a seat in the 53-member union council of ministers – the Republican Party of India (A) 's Ramdas Athawale.

But the LJP episode is also Kumar's way of telling the BJP's top leadership to accord him more respect. Kumar believes he has suffered the ignominy of not even getting an audience with the PM during his visits to Delhi.

While Kumar has some more cards up his sleeves, interesting should be Chirag Paswan's gameplan hereon and whether this adds to BJP's increasing troubles from within the party and outside.

The LJP commands a dedicated six per cent Dusadh community votes in Bihar. The JD (U) and CPI (ML) are other claimants to the state's much larger Dalit vote share. The BJP, which knows it will remain a marginal player in Bihar if not for the support of the OBCs and Dalits, has taken to raise recent Dalit versus Muslim clashes in the Purnia district. It has also promoted a Paswan leader of its own in Guru Prakash Paswan, son of former union minister Sanjay Paswan.

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