Why the two Paswans in NDA are fighting over Hajipur seat

Comprising areas of Vaishali, Samastipur and Muzaffarpur districts, Hajipur is among the six reserved seats in Bihar, the others being Gaya, Gopalganj, Samastipur, Sasaram and Jamui. The only other SC-reserved constituency of similar consequence in Bihar was once Sasaram, which was represented by former Union minister and Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram from 1952 to 1989, and then his daughter and former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar from 2004 to 2014.

Ram Vilas would often say that it was Jayaprakash Narayan who had picked him to contest from Hajipur in the 1977 Lok Sabha elections – held after the Emergency – ahead of veteran leader Ramsunder Das. Ram Vilas had won the seat with a record margin. He retained the seat in 1980, and went on to win the seat a total of eight times, once by a margin that held the record for being the country’s largest for a long time.

Over the years, people would come to associate Hajipur with two things – its bananas and Ram Vilas Paswan, who in 2000, founded the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP).

The only time Ram Vilas lost till 2019, when he chose not to contest from Hajipur, was in 2009. The LJP drew a blank in that election, in which the NDA led by Nitish Kumar, who was at the height of his popularity then, won 32 of 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar.

By 2014, the LJP was an NDA ally, and together the alliance won 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in the state, with the LJP winning six of the seven seats contested in the Naerndra Modi wave. In 2019, when the NDA increased its tally to 39 of 40 Bihar Lok Sabha seats, the LJP won all the six seats it contested.

By then, an ailing Ram Vilas had passed on the Hajipur seat to younger brother Paras, after his wife and Chirag’s mother Reena showed no interest in politics, while choosing the Rajya Sabha route for himself. Chirag, who first became an MP in 2014 from Jamui, fought from the seat again in 2019 and won. At that time, Chirag had insisted on retaining the Jamui seat rather than moving to Hajipur, while Ram Vilas, who was extremely fond of his brothers, was happy to let Paras fill his shoes.

Ram Vilas died in October 2020. The growing differences between his son and brother resulted in a split exactly a year later – into the National Lok Janshakti Party led by Paras, and LJP (Ramvilas), headed by Chirag.

Last week, after the NDA welcomed Chirag back into its fold, with PM Narendra Modi picking out Paswan Junior for a significant hug at the NDA meeting, Paras said: “Chirag touched my feet there as a nephew. That is a different relationship. But so long as I am alive, I am not going to give up my claim on Hajipur, which I represent currently.”

Chirag, however, has been telling everyone that one of his key demands to the NDA before joining the alliance was that his party candidate would contest from Hajipur. About Paras’s statement, he said: “My uncle will adhere to the gathbandhan dharma.”

While the BJP has so far maintained silence on the matter, the signals coming from the party and Chirag are that it is leaning towards the younger leader in his tussle with his uncle.