The political landscape in Bihar witnessed renewed friction with the contest for the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat intensifying between Chirag Paswan and his uncle Pashupati Nath Paras, each helming a different faction of the Lok Janshakti Party, originally founded by their patriarch Ram Vilas Paswan. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), buoyed by Nitish Kumar’s alliance, found itself grappling with this latest turmoil as part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Chirag Paswan, leading the LJP (Ram Vilas), engaged in discussions with BJP National President JP Nadda. He later announced the fruitful deliberations regarding Bihar’s seat distribution, hinting at a resolution to the Hajipur seat dilemma, which had been a contentious point since Pashupati Paras—sitting MP and leader of the breakaway faction—was also eyeing the seat. This critical seat, cultivated by Ram Vilas Paswan throughout his political career, had now become a symbol of the party’s internal feud.
The LJP’s split occurred after Ram Vilas Paswan’s death in 2020, with the party bifurcating into factions led by Chirag Paswan and Pashupati Nath Paras, who effected a coup in June 2021. This power struggle within the party was accentuated when the Election Commission of India ultimately assigned separate names and symbols to both factions, freezing the original party’s name and symbol.
Allegations surfaced that Janata Dal (United) leader and Bihar’s chief minister Nitish Kumar had a clandestine hand in the fissure. With contrasting stances towards Kumar, the split in the LJP pitted Chirag, a vocal critic, against his supportive uncle Paras. As the battle waged, NDA’s seat-sharing arrangement took center stage with the BJP emerging as the alliance’s leader, commandeering 17 seats, while Chirag Paswan’s faction received five, marking a significant shift in the state’s political power play.
The BJP’s newfound dominance comes after Nitish Kumar’s strategic realignment with the Grand Alliance. While the BJP was seen as a secondary partner in Bihar’s politics, they have now reaffirmed their standing as the alliance’s apex entity, with the number of seats serving as a testament to this assertion. This move indicates the alterations in political alliances and the ebb and flow of power in the run-up to the elections in Bihar.