Today in Politics: Amid buzz of MNS-BJP tie-up, Raj Thackeray arrives in Delhi, may meet Amit Shah

Thackeray may meet Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday morning and if things fall in place an announcement about the tie-up may be made sometime during the day. The BJP’s top leadership met Maharashtra Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis and state BJP president Chandrashekhar Bawankule in Delhi earlier on Monday to discuss seat sharing for Maharashtra, where the party has faced some trouble in wrapping up a deal.

Some in the BJP believe that the MNS will help the ruling alliance damage the Shiv Sena (UBT) led by Uddhav Thackeray by eating into its Marathi vote base in some crucial pockets.

Congress meetings

Two days after the INDIA bloc’s show of strength in Mumbai, it is back to business for the Opposition alliance’s pre-eminent member Congress on Tuesday.

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) will discuss and approve the party’s manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections at its meeting in the national Capital. The manifesto committee led by former Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram has already sent the draft document to the CWC for its approval. The committee on Tuesday will approve the draft manifesto that, according to PTI, mentions “guarantees” for justice for five different groups – Bhagidari Nyay (justice for stakeholders), Kisan Nyay (justice for farmers), Nari Nyay (justice for women), Shramik Nyay (justice for labourers), and Yuva Nyay (justice for the youth). There will be five guarantees for each nyay that the party has already announced.

Later in the evening, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge is scheduled to chair a meeting of the party’s Central Election Committee (CEC) to discuss and finalise the candidates for more seats. The party has so far named 82 candidates in two lists.

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PM Modi down south

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold a roadshow in Kerala’s Palakkad on Tuesday. It is scheduled to begin at 10.30 am. This is the PM’s second event in Kerala within a week. On March 15, he addressed a public meeting in Pathanamthitta in support of NDA candidates in south Kerala constituencies.

In the afternoon, around 1 pm, the PM is scheduled to address a rally in Salem in Tamil Nadu, a day before nominations for the Lok Sabha polls are scheduled to begin in the state. Tamil Nadu, where the BJP is unlikely to bring back former ally AIADMK to the NDA fold, will go to polls in the first phase on April 19.

What is happening in Bihar?

Almost two months after it brought back Nitish Kumar to the NDA fold, the BJP has made another major change in Bihar and decided to stick with Ram Vilas Paswan’s son Chirag instead of the late leader’s brother and current Union Minister Pashupati Kumar Paras.

The BJP, Santosh Singh writes, sided with Chirag because “of its assessment that the latter was the ‘real claimant; to his father late Ram Vilas Paswan’s legacy and would hold on to the Paswan vote”. Chirag, however, had to concede one of the LJP’s sitting seats, Nawada, to the BJP.

Paras, who holds the Food Processing Industries portfolio, is likely to address a press conference in Delhi on Tuesday to announce his resignation from the Union Cabinet. And it is not just Paras who seems to be unhappy. There are rumbles of dissent emanating from the Upendra Kushwaha camp. Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha has been given the Karakat constituency in Rohtas district, a seat he represented from 2014 to 2019. But Kushwaha is said to have expected two seats but did not get it as his space within the NDA has shrunk since his former boss Nitish Kumar’s return to the alliance.

Both Paras and Kushwaha are said to be in talks with the Opposition INDIA bloc and may switch sides. If Paras moves to the INDIA camp, he is likely to contest against his nephew in Hajipur, the seat that Ram Vilas Paswan represented nine times and is central to his legacy.

In context: Ram Vilas Paswan was considered among Bihar’s most charismatic politicians along with Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar. In 2000, he formed the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), a political outfit for Dalits in the OBC-centric political landscape of Bihar. The party had a 12% vote share in the 2005 Bihar polls, its first election, finally settling between 6% to 8% in subsequent polls. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, it won six of the seven seats contested and in 2019, it won all of the six seats it contested. The party split in 2021, a year after Ram Vilas Paswan’s death. Though the BJP initially backed his brother, the party now believes Chirag can bring it the returns his father once did.

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Upendra Singh Kushwaha and Nitish Kumar: A long love-hate relationship