Union Minister of State Pashupati Paras resigned from the Modi cabinet on Tuesday, a day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced a seat-sharing pact with Chirag Pashwan of estranged nephew and Lok Janshakti Pary (LJP Ram Vilasedevatai.
The dissatisfied Lok Dal leader Pashupati Paras said,
“I quit as minister of the Union. There was a page on the seat sharing.”
While the BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), possesses their share in the union government of Lok Sabha in Bihar, the state leaders declared their seat allotment on Monday. In the Parliament, the BJP nominates 17 persons, the Janata Dal (United) gets 16 seats, and the LJP Paswan (Ram Vilas fraction) has 5 seats.
Other allies of the NDA besides the HAM and Upendra Kushwaha-led Rashtriya Lok Morcha will contest one seat each, which is LJP chief Chaudhary Mahtab Ansari.
It is important that the Pashupati Paras faction of LJP was not written down in the pact of seat sharing as other factions. On the other hand, the president of the BJP in Bihar (Samrat Choudhary) disclosed that they are considering the possibility of recovering vote banks by teaming up with Paras.
Through different platforms, Paras had argued that he could choose to leave the coalition (NDA) if the seat distribution plan wasn’t according to his tactics. Articles indicate that the BJP ignored the claims of RLJP chief Chirag Paswan (Chairman of the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party) over several Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, including Hajipur.
A tough one for Paras Paswan, Hajipur, as it was divided between him and Chirag, was the seat where he decided to fight the Parliament elections. Nevertheless, it was a mix of locating my estranged nephew, who intended to contest from the same constituency as myself. Finally, the BJP decided to keep the Hajipur location for the LJJ (Ram Vilas faction) with the ambition of Paras.
The Lok Janshakti Party, which started under the leadership of the late Ram Vilas Paswan and whose factions are headed by their sons Chirag and Shaileesh, respectively, parted ways after Paswan’s death in 2020. Paras commands the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLP). At the same time, Chirag Paswan controls the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas faction), also one of the constituent members of the NDA alliance.
For the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, BJP and JD(U) stood as 17 candidates for each party, and the united LJP, with Ram Vilas Paswan as its leader, counted six seats. The BJP and LJP won all the seats they contested, while JD(U) emerged as the biggest winner with 16 seats in the assembly.
