Patna: Union Minister Pashupati Kumar Paras on Sunday made it clear that he will not give up his Hajipur Lok Sabha seat, rebuffing estranged nephew Chirag Paswan who wants to stake claim on the constituency nurtured by late father Ram Vilas Paswan.
Paras, addressed a press conference after a meeting of the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party, the name by which the faction headed by him upon splitting his late brother's party is known.
“We celebrate the LJP's foundation day every year on November 28. We will do so this year too, the only difference being that instead of Patna, the function will be held in Hajipur, which has been late Ram Vilas Paswan's karmabhumi”, Mr Paras told reporters.
Asked whether the change of venue was for a test of strength in the pocket borough of his late brother, to claim whose legacy uncle and nephew have been engaged in a fierce rivalry, Mr Paras replied that “it will be a change. It is like trying out a different dish to offset the monotony of the same type of food every year”.
The union minister, who had engineered the split in LJP, then headed by Chirag, in 2021, was also asked how many seats he wanted for his party in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
He replied, “In 2019, the NDA in Bihar had three constituents and it won 39 seats. Now it has only two. We are the only stable ally of the BJP. There are many newcomers who are undependable and cannot be counted on."
The allusion was to Chirag's Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), of whom he is the sole MP, besides former Union minister Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Loktantrik Janata Dal and Bihar's ex-chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha, neither of which has any presence in Parliament.
Mr Paras said, “Our party has altogether five MPs in the current Lok Sabha. We will contest all these seats and help the NDA do its best in Bihar”.
When pointed out that Chirag, who represents Jamui, has been trying to stake claim on Hajipur by fielding his mother Reena from the seat nurtured by his late father over decades, Mr Paras remarked mockingly, “he should first tell us on which party's ticket does he want to fight in the seat. His is not a party but a bog (dal nahin dal-dal hai)”.
Notably, Mr Paras had revolted against his nephew barely a few months after the death of Ram Vilas Paswan, voicing disapproval of Chirag's brinkmanship in the 2020 assembly polls when the LJP fielded candidates, many of them BJP rebels, in all seats contested by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U).
This had caused the JD(U) tally to crash and sown seeds of mistrust between the CM and the BJP which ultimately led to Kumar's exit from NDA last year.
The split in LJP had seen Chirag getting isolated in the party he had until then headed with all other MPs throwing their lot with Paras who got rewarded with a berth in the Union cabinet.
A legal wrangle ensued with both the uncle and the nephew coming up with competing claims of their respective faction being the “real” LJP. However, the Election Commission ordered the freezing of the party symbol while recognising both factions as separate political entities.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)