Patna:

Union minister Chirag Paswan has caused a flutter by stating he would choose to give up his ministerial berth instead of a compromise on his principles, in keeping with the precedent set by his late father Ram Vilas Paswan.

Mr Paswan, who heads Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), made the remark at a function of the party’s SC/ST cell here on Monday evening, even as he maintained that he “will be in the NDA till Narendra Modi is my Prime Minister”.

Responding to questions from journalists about his cryptic remark in his speech, “I will not hesitate to renounce my ministerial berth as my father did”, the young leader claimed he was speaking about the Congress-led UPA.

“My father was a minister in the UPA government too. And too many things took place back then which were detrimental to the interests of Dalits. Even pictures of Baba Saheb Ambedkar were not put up at public events. So we parted ways,” he said.

Mr Paswan is understood to have played an instrumental role in getting his father to agree to a realignment with the BJP-led NDA ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Showering praise on PM Modi, Mr Paswan said the current regime has been sensitive to his concerns about Dalits, and cited the example of the Centre’s stand on the creamy layer and lateral entry into bureaucracy to buttress his point.

However, sources in the NDA as well as the INDIA bloc here were of the view that there was more to Paswan’s rhetoric in his speech than the anodyne explanation he offered later.

Sources in both rival coalitions also felt that raking up the resignation of his father was more of an embarrassment to the BJP than the Congress since it was during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government that Paswan senior gave up his cabinet berth in protest against the 2002 riots of Gujarat.

He subsequently joined UPA and enjoyed a ministerial stint for five years.

In 2009, he ended up losing his own Lok Sabha seat and was dropped in the second Manmohan Singh ministry, understandably as retribution for turning his back on the Congress and forming a parallel front with RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, who was similarly denied a cabinet berth.

Sources also felt that Chirag Paswan, who has been touring flood-hit areas of Bihar to oversee relief work, was trying to expand his base and come out of the shadow of the BJP, and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar whom he has grudgingly patched up with after having opened a front against.

Moreover, it is also being speculated that Chirag Paswan has indirectly tried to give a message to the BJP leadership that he was not happy with its hobnobbing with his uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras who had split his late father’s Lok Janshakti Party and with whom he has a running feud.

Sources in Mr Paswan’s party, however, rejected such speculations stressing that “barely a meeting or two” between Paras and top BJP leaders did not imply that the BJP was trying to humour the disgruntled leader who had resigned from the Union cabinet in protest against his nephew getting weightage in the NDA.

The sources, however, admitted there were issues with the BJP in Jharkhand where assembly polls are due in a few months and past experience, of an alliance, was not satisfactory.

The party was mulling the prospects of going it alone, or a friendly fight, which would help the LJP(R) to expand its base in the tribal state and would agree to contest as part of NDA “only if we get seats of our choice, not a mere token share”, a source said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Hajipur:

A plaque of an educational institute with former Union Minister late Ram Vilas Paswan’s name on it is being used to cover a drain in Bihar’s Hajipur – a constituency he represented eight times since he first won the seat in 1977 – showed a video, drawing condemnation from his lawmaker son, and brother.

The stone plate – that belongs to Central Institute of Plastics Engineering and Technology Institute (CIPET) in the industrial area of Hajipur in Vaishali district – said the hostel of the institute was inaugurated by Mr Paswan on September 26, 2007, when he was the Union Minister of Chemicals and Fertilisers in the Manmohan Singh government.

The plaque was apparently being used to cover the gutter inside the premises of the institute’s women’s hostel after its chamber cover broke.

When an officer associated with the CIPET institute was reached out for comments, he refused.

Ram Vilas Paswan’s son, Union Minister Chirag Paswan, who currently represents the Hajipur constituency in Lok Sabha, condemned the incident:

“I received information through the media and journalist colleagues that the nameplate of my leader, my father, was misused in Hajipur, which is extremely unfortunate.”

In a post on X, Mr Paswan informed that he has “instructed that the nameplate be re-installed at a respectable place”.

“I cannot tolerate the insult of my leader under any circumstances, and whoever is found guilty in this incident, action will be taken against him at all costs,” he wrote.

मीडिया और पत्रकार साथियों के माध्यम से यह सूचना प्राप्त हुई कि हाजीपुर में मेरे नेता, मेरे पिता के नाम की नेमप्लेट का गलत तरीके से इस्तेमाल किया गया, जो कि अत्यंत दुर्भाग्यपूर्ण है। इस विषय के संज्ञान में आने के बाद मैंने तुरंत कार्रवाई के लिए स्थानीय जिला प्रशासन और सिपेट… pic.twitter.com/wb4BaBqJFy

— युवा बिहारी चिराग पासवान (@iChiragPaswan) September 7, 2024

Ram Vilas Paswan’s younger brother, Pashupati Kumar Paras, who represented the Hajipur seat from 2019 to 2024, sought a police case.

“An FIR should be registered against the culprits and the harshest punishment should be given,” he said.

Crediting his brother for the CIPET institute, he said, “He had worked hard to bring the institute to Hajipur. Today, such a shameful act is being done to the stone slab of the man who brought this college and got it established.”

Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) president Chirag Paswan won the Hajipur seat in Bihar in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Mr Paswan, an NDA partner, gave up his Jamui seat to contest from Hajipur.

In 2019, the Hajipur seat was won by his uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras, a year before Ram Vilas Paswan’s death on October 9, 2020. Pashupati Kumar Paras resigned from the Union cabinet this year when the BJP announced that it would back his nephew.

– With inputs from Kaushal Kishor Pathak.

New Delhi:

Union Minister and Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) President, Chirag Paswan, addressed his status as a “nepotism kid” in a podcast with news agency ANI. As the son of Ram Vilas Paswan, the founder of the undivided LJP, Mr Paswan acknowledged his privilege but also highlighted the inherent challenges of being the son of an influential political leader. 

Mr Paswan, who serves as the Union Minister of Food Processing Industries in Modi 3.0, said, “I am a nepo kid, I can’t shy away from that fact. I am proud that I am the son of Ram Vilas Paswan. For me, it is a matter of pride.”

“If you do good work, people say that it is because of your parents. So the credit is not yours. But if you do bad, then you will hear abuses. So you are always on a double-edged sword,” he added. 

Despite his privileged position as the son of a party leader, Mr Paswan claimed that his rise to the party’s leadership was not automatic. He had to prove himself, especially after the split within the LJP orchestrated by his uncle, Pashupati Paras. 

Mr Paras, Ram Vilas Paswan’s brother, was the MP from Hajipur, a constituency with a strong Paswan vote bank. However, the last assembly polls indicated that the 6 per cent Paswan vote had consolidated behind Chirag Paswan, a factor the BJP considered when excluding Pashupati Paras from the seat-sharing arrangement for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Ram Vilas Paswan had secured the Hajipur seat eight times, with four consecutive victories starting in 1996. In the 2024 polls, Chirag Paswan won the seat by over 1.7 lakh votes.

“I lost everything – the party, the symbol, the organisation, and the house we stayed in for three decades. So everything was taken away from me. I had to start from scratch; I did not even know how to make a new party,” Chirag Paswan said.

Following the LJP split, Chirag Paswan contested the 2020 Bihar assembly elections independently, fielding candidates solely against the JD(U), despite remaining within the NDA fold. He led his party’s revival through the “Ashirwad Yatra” in Bihar, ahead of the 2024 general elections. A staunch supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr Paswan’s party won all five seats it contested, making it the only NDA partner with a 100 per cent win rate. 
 

Nitish Kumar today appeared to be asking for votes for late Ram Vilas Paswan, the veteran leader from Bihar who died in 2020. However, the 73-year-old Chief Minister quickly course corrected and pitched for Chirag Paswan, the late leader’s son.  

“Bihar ka koi bhi kaam peeche nahi rahega, har tarah se hoga, isliye toh hum log kehne aaye hai ki bhai Ram Vilas ji ko dijiye, ek baari (No work of Bihar will be left behind, it will be done in every way. That is why we have come to say that please vote for Ram Vilas Paswan,” said the Chief Minister.

Swiftly changing course, the Chief Minister then appealed for votes for Chirag Paswan, a second-generation politician, fighting from Hajipur – a seat represented by Senior Paswan nine times.

“Ram Vilas ji ke putra ko aap dijiye, Chirag Paswan ji ko (Please vote for Ram Vilas Paswan’s son Chirag Paswan),” said the Chief Minister in Hajipur. 

“Aur jab itna jyada dete hi the Ram Vilas Paswan ji ko, lekin aap inko dijiye abhi toh naujawan hain, ye aage badhega aur khoob kaam karega (You used to vote overwhelmingly for Ram Vilas Paswan ji, now vote for Chirag Paswan. He is young and will do a lot of work),” said the Chief Minister amid loud cheers and a round of applause. 

The acrimony between Mr Kumar and Junior Paswan, both back in the BJP-led NDA, appeared a thing of the past. 

Chirag Paswan, 41, has pledged eternal loyalty to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a dramatic Hanuman metaphor, he has said that the image of PM Modi is seared in his heart and will be visible to anyone if, like Lord Hanuman, he slashes open his chest.  

“I am terribly missing my father. This is the first time when I will have to file nomination papers with him not around. He was there to bless me both in 2014 and 2019,” Mr Paswan, who calls himself a “Yuva Bihari”, told reporters after filing his nomination on Thursday.

Chirag Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) has got five seats in Bihar as per the seat-sharing formula decided by the BJP-led coalition.

He was the national president of Lok Janshakti Party, founded by late Paswan, until it was split in 2021 by the latter’s younger brother Pashupati Kumar Paras.

Pashupati Paras currently holds the Hajipur seat, which will vote in the fifth phase on May 20 in the ongoing marathon six week Lok Sabha polls.  

The 40 seats in Bihar are undergoing polls in all seven phases. In 2019, BJP-led NDA swept the state by winning 39 out of 40 seats, while Congress won just one seat. Lalu Yadav’s RJD, a formidable force in the state, failed to open its account.

The Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance), the opposition coalition in Bihar, including Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Congress, and Left parties, have announced that the RJD, its largest constituent, will contest 26 seats.

As part of the NDA, BJP and JD(U) will contest on 17 and 16 seats, respectively. Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) and the Rashtriya Lok Morcha will contest one seat each.

The votes will be counted on June 4.