The Chirag Project

DIVIDING HIS TIME be­tween his Ministry of Food Processing Industries in New Delhi and poll-bound home state of Bihar, Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), or LJP(RV), President Chirag Paswan is a busy man. "You cannot get more than 10 minutes with the minister tomorrow. We will let you know the time," an aide scheduling his appointments says on the phone.

Outside his office, in a large hall with a dome-shaped skylight, several people, including some from his home state, wait to meet him. The minister is apparently not adhering strictly to the time limit fixed by his aide. "I am not giving any in­terview to the media on Bihar politics as of now," he says politely, at the outset. With the characteristic vermilion running be­tween his brows to the forehead, several sacred threads round his wrist and Bihar politics on his mind, the contrast between him and his late father Ram Vilas Paswan, the LJP founder, is stark. A minister in the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, Chirag has set the cat among the pigeons by making public his desire to contest the state Assembly election, something the three-time MP has never done in the last 11 years of his political career.

Paswan admits that he plans to fight the elections, scheduled for later this year, where LJP is a small partner in the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United), or JD(U), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He, however, dismisses speculation that he is pitching to be the next chief minis­ter, saying that his intention is to keep his voter charged. "What I am doing is only to help and strengthen my alliance. You are a significant part of an alliance only if there is a vote percentage coming with you and if you are able to transfer that vote bank to partners," he says. He refuses to speak fur­ther on the matter. Negotiations are yet to be held on the seat-sharing arrangement.

The actor-turned-politician is bound to have factored in that he would not be in the reckoning for chief minister either in the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-led Ma­hagathbandhan, with Lalu Prasad nam­ing his 35-year-old son Tejashwi Yadav as his heir, or in NDA, because if BJP wins more seats than JD(U), it would prefer its own party leader in the top post. As of now, Chirag's strategy to swerve into state politics is seen to have more to do with bol­stering his bargaining power for seats. Of the 243 seats, if BJP and JD(U), which was earlier the senior partner contesting more seats, settle on fighting an equal number of around 100 seats each, LJP would like to get a sizeable chunk of the remaining 40- odd constituencies, with some left for Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha and Upendra Kushwaha's Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RLM), both of which are part of NDA. However, more than the number, his party is keen on the "quality" of seats, ac­cording to a party leader. This would mean Chirag Paswan would like to get seats where his party has leverage.

For a party which has been in alliances led by different parties in Bihar ever since it was formed in 2000 after Ram Vilas Paswan split from the Janata Dal, this is the first time LJP(RV) is going to ask for votes in favour of the chief minister. In the 2020 Bihar elections, the undivided LJP had fought on its own, winning just one of the 137 seats it con­tested. The party is counting on the fact that despite contesting only about 55 per cent of the seats then, it managed to get a vote share of nearly 6 per cent. In LJP(RV)'s calculations, if it had contested all it may have captured around 12-13 per cent vote share, just about 3 per cent less than JD(U). LJP(RV) had emerged No 2 in nine seats, mostly cutting into JD(U)'s space. Not only had JD(U)'s tally dropped from 71 in 2015 to 43, putting it in third place after RJD and BJP, but its strike rate also fell far below that of BJP's. Chirag, who had targeted Nitish while backing BJP candidates, has been describing himself as Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "hanu­man", pledging his unwavering commit­ment to him. In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, LJP(RV) won all the five seats it contested, including Chirag's, who moved from Jamui, which he won in the 2014 and 2019 General Elections, to Hajipur, his father's turf. He would like to retain his party's 2024 strike rate for which he knows that every vote counts, when wafer-thin mar­gins dictate the fates of alliances. In 2020, the margin of victory was less than 3,500 in almost 40 seats across the state.

ALTHOUGH, THIS TIME, LJP(RV) is all set to seek votes for Nitish Kumar, as the chief min­isterial face of NDA, it has not been able to wholly shed its rancour towards him. According to a party leader, Kumar's de­cision on sub-bifurcation of the 22 Dalit castes by categorising all barring the Paswans as Mahadalits, giving them cer­tain perks, has caused anguish among the community. Earlier this month, be­fore announcing at a rally in Bihar's Arah that he will contest the Assembly polls and work for "Bihar first, Bihari first", a slogan he had coined during the 2020 state elections, Chirag had shot off a letter to Nitish, saying the rape and murder of a nine-year-old Dalit girl in Muzaffarpur highlighted the breakdown of law and order in the state.

While he is trying to hold on to LJP's Paswan vote bank, estimated around 4 per cent, the young politician would not like his party's politics to revolve round just its traditional base. An LJP leader close to him says Paswan always believed casteism is the reason Bihar could not develop. He has even indicated that he may contest from a general seat, instead of a reserved Scheduled Caste (SC) one, signalling his intention to move beyond caste dynamics. In a state which has a his­tory of caste holding sway over elections, his task could be challenging. Unlike his father—a nine-time Lok Sabha MP who projected himself as a leader of Dalits in Bihar but never returned to fight in a state election after he first won the Bihar As­sembly polls in 1969—Chirag seems to be looking at a future in state politics much beyond 2025. At 42, he has a long way to go. His father, who held Cabinet portfo­lios in seven Union governments led by various parties, had reconciled himself to being out of the chief ministerial race in Bihar and hung on to the Centre, even as he nurtured his constituency. He did, however, often become a kingmaker in state politics, a role his son could play if the results throw up a fractured verdict. Although Chirag inherited his father's legacy, following the latter's death in 2020, a year later LJP split, months after his uncle Pashupatinath Paras orchestrated a coup against him.

Chirag Paswan's decision to contest the Assembly election has been given several different interpretations by ana­lysts, such as harbouring chief ministerial ambitions, being backed by BJP to fill the dearth of dynamic young faces in the state NDA, or a pitch at playing kingmaker or flexing his muscles ahead of the seat-sharing arrangement.

While he declines to talk of state politics, Chirag does respond to a ques­tion about his ambitions and aspirations when he decided to take the plunge into politics. "It wasn't really any ambition. I was brought up in Delhi, I worked in Mumbai. That was the time Shiv Sena was targeting Biharis. I was working in films in Mumbai then and I saw this as­sault on Biharis very closely. That was what triggered the decision to join poli­tics. I decided that I have to go back and work for Bihari pride. We come from a land of endless opportunities and it just needs to be explored so that Biharis don't need to migrate," he says.

Chirag Paswan is following his heart; a lesson, he says, he learnt from his father. "He always said right and wrong are de­batable. You cannot always be right. But stand by your decisions and follow your heart. Just give your 100 per cent to whatever you have decided. This is what has kept me going through my difficult times," he says. Right now, he has set his heart on Bihar.