29 in kitty, Paswan talks tough: Look who matters

Dismissing speculation that he was being offered the Railway portfolio at the Centre in exchange for support to the RJD in Bihar, he distributed sweets ‘‘more for the defeat of the RJD than my 29 seats.’’

‘‘I work on one goal at a time and this time it was to get Laloo out of the chief minister’s bungalow. I have succeeded. After the Lok Sabha polls victory, he said it was all a Laloo wave. Where is the Laloo wave?’’

In Laloo’s moment of crisis, Paswan is sending out a clear message: ‘‘Now he knows who can tilt Bihar politics.’’ He has an axe to grind against Laloo: he wasn’t given sufficient credit for the UPA’s victory last May and the Railway portfolio was snatched from him.

Paswan’s claim to be an alternative of both the RJD and BJP-JD(U) had a large number of takers. There were a number of seats he lost by narrow margins. His success formula was simple: Be a unifying platform for Laloo’s disenchanted Muslim supporters and the upper caste anti-Laloo voters, harvest the palpable discontent among the extremely backward castes (EBCs) and Dalits. In regions across the state, he picked up seats, held by both the RJD and JD(U). But towards the last phase of elections, he was sidelined as the contest got polarised between the NDA and RJD. ‘‘If the polls were done in one day, I would have got 60 seats,’’ he said.

Although Paswan was celebrating the moment, Laloo Prasad was unwilling to throw up his hands and accept defeat. The RJD leader said he would stake claim to form a government and ‘‘other secular parties must decide what they need to do.’’ Laloo’s plan is to corner Paswan into supporting the RJD on the secular plank, lest he be exposed as a spoiler among his newly cultivated Muslim voters.