Pashupati Kumar Paras former Union minister was one of the most sought-after politicians in Bihar has submitted his resingnation.As he has low-profile until two months before that, it was only after he engineered a split in the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), a party founded by his late brother Ram Vilas Paswan, that he was courted by multiple parties.
As the Janata Dal (United) wanted him in its corner seemingly to send a message toPashupati Kumar Paras’s son Chirag, who caused a significant dent in the party’s votes in the 2020 assembly election, while the BJP wasted no time in inducting him into the National Democratic Alliance council of ministers. Today, he cuts a lonesome figure. The BJP has struck a seat-sharing deal with nephew and challenger Chirag ahead of the Lok Sabha polls — a move that has caused Paras, an MP from Bihar’s Haijpur, to step down as the Union minister for food processing industries in protest. Not even the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the arch-rival of the Nitish Kumar-led government in the state, appears to want him.
“Paras ji is like an empty box. There is nothing inside. Forget the Paswans, he will not even get any votes from his own family,” Sunil Kumar Singh, an RJD MLC and close aide of party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, told ThePrint.
It was the RJD’s offering of eight Lok Sabha seats to Chirag’s party Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) that had reportedly caused the BJP to quickly close the deal with the party.
“The RJD is not a party that believes in trying to rehabilitate spent forces,” Singh added.
This political unmooring could also lead to Pashupati Kumar Paras losing four of the five MPs that sided with him when the LJP splintered in 2021. Three sitting MPs, Chandan Singh, brother of bahubali politician Surajbhan Singh, Choudhary Mehboob Ali Kaiser, and Veena Devi are rumoured to be seeking Lok Sabha tickets from the RJD. The fourth, Samastipur MP Prince Raj, son of Ram Vilas Paswan’s other brother Ram Chandra Paswan who had joined Paras’s camp in 2021, appears to have hit a major political roadblock — Chirag has made it clear that he would not give Lok Sabha tickets to those who rebelled against him.
According to N.K. Chaudhary, a political analyst and former visiting professor of economics at Bihar’s Patna University, Pashupati Kumar Paras has fallen victim to the “natural political instinct of survival of the fittest”.
“If BJP has preferred Chirag over Pashupati Kumar Paras, it means that the party has more faith in Chirag. The BJP is doing this at the national level… It has nothing to do with political ideology,” he said.
For now, Paras and his Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RJLP) are weighing their options. “We will be deciding our future course soon,” its spokesperson, Lalan Chandravanshi, said.
On its part, the BJP denies betraying Pashupati Kumar Paras. However, it also admits that political compulsions forced it to pick Chirag.
“We could not have ignored Chirag, who campaigned for our candidates in the bypolls (in December),” Bihar BJP spokesperson Prem Ranjan Patel said. “On the other hand, Paras ji’s support was limited to making statements. It was clear that the Paswan section of Dalits recognised Chirag and not Paras as the inheritor of late Ram Vilas Paswan’s political legacy.” For ,more details click
