BJP leaders said that they will not give their hundred per cent while canvassing for votes for LJP as claims of BJP leaders and workers have been neglected.
Of the total of six reserved Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, five have been allotted by NDA to BJP allies—four to Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) Ram Vilas faction and one that will be contested by Jitan Ram Majhi of Hindustani Avam Morcha (HAM).
The lone remaining reserved seat that will be contested by a BJP candidate is that of Sasaram, where its candidate will be Shivesh Ram.
Overall in Bihar, as per the seat distribution arrangements between National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partners, five seats have been given to LJP, 16 to Nitish Kumar led Janata Dal (United), one to Upendra Kushwaha and one to HAM with the remaining 17 to be contested by BJP candidates.
The Chirag Paswan led faction will contest in Vaishali, Hajipur, Samastipur, Khagaria and Jamui. Of these five, Chirag is himself contesting from Hajipur while his brother in law is contesting from Jamui. From Khagaria he has given the ticket to the 32-year-old Rajesh Verma who is a Bhagalpur based businessman with interest in gold and real estate. Of the remaining two, Veena Devi has been renominated from Vaishali while the 25-yearold Shambhavi Chowdhary, who is the daughter of JDU minister and former state Congress president Ashok Chowdhary, will be making her political debut from Samastipur.
However, the significant number of seat allocation to LJP, which is now being led by Chirag Paswan, has emerged as an avoidable challenge for BJP strategists.
BJP leaders, across caste and community, who have stakes in these seats, while speaking to The Sunday Guardian, said that they will not give their hundred per cent while campaigning and canvassing for votes for LJP candidates as claims of BJP workers and leaders who were working on these seats with a hope to get tickets have been neglected.
According to state BJP leaders, this time in wake of a “weakened” JDU, they had hopes that their party would contest on at least 22-25 out of total 40 seats including three reserved seats in Bihar. However, neither of the two expectations were met.
What is likely to compound problems for BJP which is desperately trying to emulate its 2019 poll performance when NDA candidates won on 39 seats, is even LJP is now facing rebellion on these seats with two dozen senior party leaders announcing to resign from LJP accusing Paswan of practising nepotism and “selling” tickets that ideally should have been given to leaders from the party.
On Wednesday, less than 96 hours after Paswan announced the tickets, at least 20 senior leaders of the party resigned from their posts while announcing the same in a much covered press conference at Patna. The target of their anger was the candidate selection in Jamui, Vaishali and Khagaria and anger over giving ticket to Shambhavi Chowdhary, whose father Ashok Chowdhary had launched a strong campaign against LJP when the two parties were fighting against each other and not together in the 2020 assembly polls.
In Jamui, Chirag is facing anger over giving ticket to his brother in law, in Vaishali the party candidate Veena Devi is seen by the party workers as someone who had played an instrumental role in splitting the LJP into two after the passing away of Ram Vilas Paswan in 2020 and in Khagaria allegations are being raised that Verma was preferred over more capable candidates as they were not heavyweight when it came to the purse they were carrying.
Among those who resigned from the LJP on Wednesday included a few high profile names including former MP Renu Kushwaha party’s national vice president, former MLA and party’s national general secretary Satish Kumar, Ajay Kushwaha who was incharge of expanding the party in the state, Rabindra Kumar Singh, the organisation secretary of the party, general secretaries Rajesh Dangi and Chitranjan Kumar and secretary Sanjay Lal.
Speaking to The Sunday Guardian, Rabindra Singh, accused Chirag of giving tickets to people who were not even primary members of the party and stated that there was a lot of resentment against Chirag among the party workers, which will be visible from the result on the five seats that LJP is contesting.
“From now on, we will work to defeat the LJP candidates on these five seats. Till 29th March (one day before the ticket was announced) Chirag kept fooling us that the tickets will only be given to those whose name has been recommended by the party’s parliamentary board and I as organizational secretary know that none of the four candidates, except Chirag from Jamui, was recommended by the party’s parliamentary board. In fact the candidates from Khagaria and Samastipur are not even members of the LJP. We were kept under the impression that Chirag will give tickets to someone from amongst us, including Raju Tiwari (state president LJP), Sanjay Paswan (secretary) and other senior leaders who were working for the LJP and standing with Chirag when everyone had left after Ram Vilas Paswan’s death. It was us who went from door to door, by using our own money to galvanize the workers,” Singh said.
According to him, after the tickets were announced, Chirag while responding to his letter in which Singh had raised questions about LJP tickets being “sold” and being given to family members, replied that “I have read your letter, I respect your emotions, let’s meet and talks.” In the letter, accessed by The Sunday Guardian, Singh, among other things, has claimed that LJP tickets were sold for “Rs 20 crore to Rs 40 crore.”
Singh claimed that the LJP will lose at least four of the five seats. “Unless the Modi wave works for him, Chirag will lose most of the seats,” he said.
All the allegations levelled by LJP rebels have been categorically denied by members of team Chirag Paswan who stated that tickets have been given to winning candidates to ensure that the NDA crosses the 400-seat mark.
The possibility of LJP (Ram Vilas faction) candidates performing well in the elections is also likely to depend on how the other faction, that is led by Chirag’s estranged uncle Pashupati Paras decides to play out. While publicly Pashupati Paras who was discarded by the BJP in favour of Chirag has stated that he will help Chirag, party observers say that this might not happen on the ground. The LJP faction headed by Pashupati Paras had all the sitting MPs, but none of them were renominated by the NDA. Paras, in an embarrassing turn of events, had to quit as cabinet minister in protest. After threatening to rebel against NDA, Pashupati later announced support for the NDA.
As per the caste census, whose findings were declared last year, Paswans are the second largest caste after the Yadavs in Bihar accounting for 5.3% of the total population that comes to 70 lakh community members.
However, past electoral records show that LJP’s vote share is continuously coming down since it was formed after its split from the Janata Dal United (JDU) in November 2000. In the 2020 assembly elections that were held amidst the passing away of party patriarch Ram Vilas Paswan, the LJP contested on 135 seats, won on 1, stood second on 10 seats and third on 94 seats, while polling 23.83 lakh votes or 5.8% per cent of the total votes that were cast. Before 2020, it had contested in four assembly elections: February 2005, October 2005, October 2010 and October 2015. In these four elections, it has won 44 seats of the total 498 seats that it has contested across the 20 years of its existence. In February 2005, it contested 178 seats, winning 29. A few months later, in the October polls, it contested on 203 seats, but could only win on 10 seats. In the 2010 polls, it won three of the 75 seats that it had contested, while the number further decreased to two seats in 2015, in an election where it had contested 42 seats in an alliance with the BJP. In terms of vote share, too, its performance has not been encouraging. In the February 2005 elections, it had got 12.62% of the total votes polled, which came down to 11.10% in October 2005. The vote share of LJP decreased to 6.75% in the 2010 polls. In 2015 , where the party contested on 42 seats but could only win on two seats, it got only 4.8% of votes polled.