New Challenge For NDA In Bihar As A Constituent Party Intends To Go Full Throttle In 2025 Election

A Bihar politician who was a minister in the second Narendra Modi government has said that his party will go full throttle in the 2025 Bihar assembly election.

Pashupati Kumar Paras' Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP) is part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and therefore, by contesting all of the 243 Bihar assembly seats next year, it will pose a challenge to the alliance as well.

Paras became chief of the RLJP, formed after the bifurcation of the existing Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) in 2020.

After his brother Ram Vilas Paswan’s death, Paras' stature grew significantly. He then took the support of a majority of LJP members of parliament (MP) and formed a new party, the RLJP.

Paras expressed RLJP's intention to contest all the Bihar assembly seats recently at the state executive conference of his party.

He has asked the NDA to give RLJP a ticket for one of the four seats to be contested in by-polls after the respective members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) from these seats were elected as members of parliament (MP).

For the Tarari seat, Paras pitched RLJP national vice president Narendra Kumar Pandey, also known as Sunil Pandey, as a candidate.

Contesting as an independent, Pandey had lost the 2020 assembly election to Sudama Prasad, the current MP of Bihar's Arrah.

Paras has said his party will make a strong comeback after the recent setback and will assist the NDA in the 2025 election, but on the condition that RLJP gets its desired share in the seat distribution.

In a show of strength, a large crowd of RLJP workers, including all the office bearers of the state executive, presidents, 38 districts-in-charge, state presidents of all cells, and presidents of all blocks and districts of the Dalit wing of the party, were present on the occasion.

Addressing the workers, Paras openly said that the NDA had done injustice to their party and even cheated it. He added that this won’t be tolerated in the 2025 assembly election and that all options are open for RLJP.

Paras' statements, especially the reference to all options being open, can be considered a warning to the NDA that RLJP could even choose to side with the Indian National Developmental Inclusive (INDI) Alliance or go independent on all 243 seats.

RLJP’s fortunes have been on a steep decline since July 2023, when Chirag Paswan, Paras’ nephew, returned to the NDA fold. Since then, an internal competition has been brewing between Paswan’s Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) (LJP(RV)) and RLJP for more stickers in the 2024 general election.

In March of this year, Paras started to get a hint that he may lose this internal battle. It turned out to be true eventually. While LJP(RV) got five seats to contest, RLJP did not get any. Still, a lack of options forced Paras to stay with the NDA.

Later, in June, the Nitish Kumar government asked RLJP to vacate its party office on the Peer Ali Khan Road in Patna.

Not just political, the situation was personal for Paras. His nephew Chirag Paswan holds him (Paras) responsible for breaking LJP and taking away his father Ram Vilas Paswan's decades of hard work. (Chirag) Paswan toiled and wrestled back the respect and seats lost.

In the process, he did something that Paras is now trying to repeat. 

In the 2020 assembly election, LJP was not part of the NDA. Paswan was miffed with JD(U) because Nitish Kumar had insulted his father, Ram Vilas Paswan. (Chirag) Paswan expressed his feelings in an X post.

As a result, Paswan, then heading the Bihar chapter of LJP, fielded 137 candidates. These seats were strategically chosen so that Kumar’s JD(U) would suffer maximum damage. Though LJP could win only one seat, it catalysed a loss of 28 seats for JD(U), whose seat share went down from 71 in 2015 to 43 in 2020.

Paswan was then said to be in an unofficial alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP and JD(U) did not contest the Bihar election together in 2020.

Paras is looking to do something similar. If the BJP does not accede to his pressure tactics (the chances of which are high), Paras may go solo, as even the INDI Alliance accepting him as a partner is a distant possibility.

However, the INDI Alliance may think of using RLJP to take away NDA vote share, especially on seats where Paswan’s LJP(RV) will contest. If RLJP builds up enough financial muscle, it will be capable of taking away a significant share of Dalit and Mahadalit votes from both LJP(RV) and JD(U).

That would be another headache for the NDA in a state that is yet to come to terms with the emergence of Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj as a third front in 2025.