NEW DELHI: Among the interesting contests brewing in the Bihar elections is the one between two different parties that share the same political legacy. While one of them is led by the chacha (uncle) and the other is run by the bhatija (nephew).
The chacha is Pashupati Kumar Paras, brother of late Ram Vilas Paswan, whose son Chirag Paswan is the bhatija. Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party suffered a vertical split after his death, with Paras floating the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP), while Chirag chose to name his faction as Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas).
With the NDA being extra generous this time in allotting 29 seats to Chirag’s party, Paras has threatened to play spoiler by fielding candidates against almost all of Chirag’s nominees, apart from entering the fray from other seats.
Paras initially wanted to enter the fray as part of the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan. But since seat-sharing talks failed, he decided to go it alone.
Chirag has fielded five candidates so far, and so has Paras from the same seats.
The most interesting of the five contests is in Mahua in Vaishali district, where Paras fielded Shamsuzzama against Chirag’s Sanjay Kumar Singh. Others in the fray include RJD patriarch Lalu Prasad Yadav’s elder son, Tej Pratap Yadav, and RJD’s Mukesh Raushan. Shamsuzzama is expected to damage Sanjay Kumar Singh’s prospects, due to the division in Paswan and other Dalit votes. The Paswan vote bank constitutes 5.31% of the state’s population.
During the 2020 polls, Chirag had fielded candidates against the ruling JD(U) and damaged its prospects of picking up more seats.