Updated: September 7, 2020 8:48:11 pm
LJP President Chirag Paswan, son of Union Minister and party founder Ram Vilas Paswan, has been attacking Prime Minister Nitish Kumar’s government for its alleged misgovernance, especially since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. (Express photo: Renuka Puri)
The Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) will hold a crucial meeting on Monday (September 7) to decide whether to participate in the upcoming Bihar Assembly elections as part of the NDA led by Nitish Kumar.
What is the conflict between the LJP and the JD-U?
For more than a year, the relationship between the alleged alliance partners in Bihar has been bitter, in a very public way.
LJP President Chirag Paswan, son of Union Minister and party founder Ram Vilas Paswan, has been attacking Prime Minister Nitish Kumar’s government for its alleged misgovernance, especially since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the closure that followed, and most recently, the flooding that has devastated much of the state.
Chirag Paswan, who now controls the party, has spoken publicly of a total breakdown of communications between the Chief Minister and the LJP, revealing that they have not spoken for more than a year except five minutes on the Sushant Singh Rajput case. .
Chirag has complained that the LJP does not have a minister in Nitish’s ministry and clarified that while his party has no problems with the BJP and remains its ally, this is not the case with the JD-U.
For their part, the JD-U leaders have dismissed Chirag as having negligible influence in Bihar, the leader of a party with only two seats, and have compared him to “Kalidas,” an allusion to the poet’s fable. . and the playwright sawing the same branch from a tree on which he was sitting.
The relationship between Nitish and his contemporary Ram Vilas Paswan has had its own ups and downs, and the two leaders have often not been on the same page.
While Paswan claims to be Bihar’s largest Dalit face, Nitish’s social engineering of creating the category of ‘Mahadalits’ has left the influence of the LJP largely restricted to the Paswan community itself. Interestingly, the LJP’s announcements for the upcoming elections appear to attempt to break this mold, stating “na dharm, na jaat, karenge sabki baat (neither religion nor caste, we will speak of all) ”.
There has been a great deal of mistrust since 2005, when it was suggested that Nitish’s JD-U attempted to assault LJP lawmakers in an attempt to form the government.
So what is Monday’s (September 7) meeting about and what are the options before the LJP?
The LJP is holding a meeting of its parliamentary board, which will decide its course of action with the Bihar elections in two months’ time.
One option for the party is to continue the NDA alliance, push aggressively for more seats, but ultimately settle for what they get.
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The other option is to fight the election alone, outside of the alliance. The plan being discussed is to fight half the seats and, in deference to the BJP, only those in which the JD-U presents candidates.
Political coherence has never been the strong point of the LJP in its 20-year history. After parting ways with Janata Dal, Paswan led his new party to his first Lok Sabha election (2004) in alliance with Congress and the RJD, but in the 2005 Bihar Assembly elections, he fought with Congress but against the RJD. In 2009 and 2010 he remained at the RJD and then in 2014 he joined the NDA.
Is this just a position to get more seats from the LJP?
Part of this is clearly related to the number of seats the LJP would win under the alliance umbrella. The JD-U can argue that the LJP won only two seats in the last state elections and three in the previous elections. While the LJP has been pushing to contest a considerable number of seats under the alliance, it is not making much progress. From now on, it would seem that the party does not have much possibility of growth in the medium or long term if it remains in the alliance.
However, at least three BJP state leaders said the final position on this issue would be taken by the party’s central leadership, which would assess factors such as winnability, the strength of the opposition, and the potential threat in the event of NDA breaks. “If the BJP leadership insists that the LJP must compete as part of the NDA, Ram Vilas Paswan will definitely do so,” said one of these leaders.
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The position taken by the BJP leadership could be related to the number of seats in which the BJP wants to present its own candidates. If the alliance fights together, the BJP would want to contest as many seats as the JD-U. “And if the BJP and the JD-U take 100 seats each, the LJP is expected to demand for itself between 30 and 36 of the 243 electoral districts,” said another leader.
But if the LJP is just a small player, what does he gain by taking on the JD-U?
In terms of seats, the LJP’s numbers are declining. In the state elections held in February 2005, the LJP won 29 seats, but in the elections held just months later, in October-November of that year, its count was reduced to just 10. In the next elections to the Assembly, in 2010, the LJP all but disappeared, obtaining only three seats in the House of 243. In 2015, it fared even worse, winning only two seats.
But Chirag, a two-term MP who took over the LJP in 2019, is an ambitious leader who is understood to have told his party colleagues that he wants to be prime minister one day. There is a sense in Bihar politics that this election could be Nitish’s last hurray, and with Lalu Prasad aging, ill and in jail, there is room for new political leadership to emerge in Bihar. While Tejashwi Yadav is at the forefront of the RJD, the LJP feels it needs to grow the party at the booth level to be in a better position when the 2025 election rolls around.
There are those who argue that the LJP does not have a presence in all of Bihar. But the opposite of that in some minds within the LJP is that if they don’t contest more seats than the alliance is willing to offer, they will never be able to increase their presence.
What is the BJP’s opinion on all this?
BJP Chairman JP Nadda has called on the party in Bihar to fight as the NDA and to ensure that all candidates, including those from the JD-U and the LJP, win. But there is an opinion in one section of the party that it is time for the BJP to take its place as the largest party in Bihar.
This section, which includes a number of MPs and MLA, believes that it would be good for the BJP if the LJP goes its own way. Their argument is as follows:
The JD-U doesn’t have much of a future after Nitish, and not many leaders are likely to stick around the party after he hangs up his boots. “Some senior JD-U leaders could join the BJP, or the party itself could merge with the BJP,” said a BJP deputy.
In this situation, the LJP may enter as a junior partner of the BJP in an alliance dominated by the latter. “If the LJP succeeds in extending its base to districts other than its current strongholds, it still will not significantly affect the BJP base of support,” said the BJP leader. In fact, since the BJP has a stronger grip on the advanced caste support base, it could rely on the LJP to bring some caste support back.
And what are the possible political ramifications if the LJP fights alone in the next election?
For starters, it will point out cracks in the ruling alliance in the same way that Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM leaving the Mahagathbandhan was seen as a sign of discord in the field of Opposition.
Two, while the Paswans may not have a multi-caste support base in Bihar, Ram Vilas enjoys significant goodwill among a large portion of the Programmed Castes. If this vote breaks down, it could lead to tight contests and potentially create a problem for the JD-U.
Chirag Paswan has also been talking about “Yuva Bihari” for more than a year, so particularly in and around Jamui, his parliamentary seat, some young people may vote for him.
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