For tracing the genesis of the BJP’s sudden love for Chirag Paswan, the leader of the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), one needs to examine the developments which took place before and after the October -November 2020 assembly election in Bihar.
The fact is that most of the media narratives about Chirag, whom the BJP has now decided to use, were not factually correct. But since such fantastic stories suit the powers that be, they are consciously planted in the media. And there is no dearth of journalists ready to accomplish this job.
The reason for the dumping of his uncle and Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras by the BJP is simple. It did not want young Chirag to cross over and tie up with the INDIA combination.
The saffron party feared that in such a case, it would lose the votes of the Dusadhs – who usually use Paswan as their surname and make up 5.3% of the state’s population – to the opposition alliance.
Old Paras, according to its estimate, does not have a similar hold on his caste-men.
But in July 2021, the same BJP found in Paras all the merits and made him a minister in the Union cabinet. Four other MPs of his breakaway Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party got instructions – guess from where – to follow Paras and not Chirag, who was left alone.
The split was engineered by the BJP, and not the Janata Dal (United) (JD(U)), to teach Chirag a lesson for his role in Bihar’s 2020 assembly election, in which the NDA just managed to win by a wafer-thin majority.
In fact, a very weak JD(U) was not capable of causing such a division in the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).
According to the BJP, Paras (left) does not have a similar hold as Chirag Paswan does on his caste-men. Photo: X/@PashupatiParas.
Favourite whipping boy
One needs to be reminded that immediately after the results of the 2020 assembly election, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar put all the blame on Chirag for the poor performance of his own party, the JD(U), which could win only 43 of the 122 seats it contested.
Chirag’s (then-united) LJP had fielded 137 candidates for a house of 243. Thus, it did not fight as an NDA constituent.
The media went to town with this version without cross-checking the fact that Nitish actually needed a whipping boy for the disastrous performance.
Soon, the story started appearing in the print and electronic media that it was actually the BJP which put up all these LJP candidates to weaken Nitish.
In a post facto analysis, one can come to any absurd conclusion. If Chirag was really responsible for the JD(U)’s bad show, who was responsible for the equally dismal performance of the more organised, cadre-based BJP?
If the JD(U) could win only 43 of the 122 seats it contested, why did the BJP bag just 74 out of the 121 seats for which it fielded candidates? Why did the saffron party not win, say, 100 or more seats? After all, in the 2010 assembly election, the BJP won 91 out of 102 seats, while Nitish’s party won 115 out of the 141 it contested.
Herein lies the crux of the matter. If the BJP had really weakened the JD(U) by putting LJP candidates, then it almost committed suicide, because ultimately, the NDA barely managed to win.
Also read: How Has the Bihar Political Landscape Changed Since Nitish Kumar’s Crossover to the BJP?
Turmoil in the BJP
The truth of the matter was that the BJP was itself in turmoil throughout the assembly election campaign.
As many as 22 of its state-level leaders had deserted the party and joined the LJP when they failed to get tickets. This included Rajendra Singh, a senior RSS functionary, who was even projected as the party’s CM face in the 2015 assembly election.
Besides, Rameshwar Chaurasia and Usha Vidyarthi, former MLA and minister respectively, also contested on LJP tickets.
There was complete chaos in the saffron camp, which the media underplayed for obvious reasons.
Apart from this, 15 of the LJP’s candidates (137 minus 122) stood against the BJP’s official nominees. So, the NDA heaved a great sigh of relief when the results came out.
If Nitish put all the blame on Chirag, the BJP top brass got rid of deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi. The truth is that more than Sushil Modi, it was the central leadership that was responsible for the total confusion within the so-called well-disciplined BJP.
It needs to be recalled that on October 22, Sushil Modi wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he tested COVID-19 positive and was hospitalised, and thus would not attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s opening election rally in Sasaram a day later.
But a couple of days after, he was seen campaigning. This raised a lot of eyebrows in political circles.
Also read: The Loneliness of Sushil Kumar Modi
As Chirag was well-suited to become the favourite whipping boy, nobody raised any objections to his father’s stand. But the fact was that before his death on October 8 – that is, just 20 days before the first phase of polling – Ram Vilas Paswan, then-Union fertiliser minister, had been extremely critical of Nitish Kumar’s handling of the first COVID-19 wave.
Not only that, but the process of distributing LJP tickets to rebel BJP leaders had started when he was still alive.
The BJP top echelon remained mute spectators when the LJP and the JD(U), even during Ram Vilas Paswan’s lifetime, were locked in a grim, wordy duel.
So, when Modi decided to induct Paras into his cabinet on July 8, 2021, the motive was to sideline Chirag, who was following his father’s line against Nitish Kumar. The idea was to go to polls with Paras as the Dusadh face.
But in the last three years or so, the saffron party realised that Paras does not have a hold on the caste.
Apart from this, unlike in the 2020 assembly poll, when the LJP went solo, this time there was a likelihood of Chirag being wooed by the INDIA combination.
Thus, the ruling party had to drop Paras like a hot potato and join hands with Chirag.
Finally, as Modi is losing his magic touch and Dusadhs in a sizeable number are inclined towards the Rashtriya Janata Dal and Left parties too, in particular the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, it was necessary to rope Chirag in.
Had the BJP been really powerful, it would not have bothered about either Chirag or Paras, which incidentally means ‘touchstone’.
