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‘Father said will prefer poison to BJP…’: Chirag Paswan harks back to 2014 NDA re-entry as Bihar polls near
Chirag also spoke about how ‘we could not meet Rahul Gandhi for three months despite trying’, which was just before Ram Vilas Paswan eventually went with BJP
With the Bihar elections not far away, new alignments are likely to emerge in the state. Amid this, union minister Chirag Paswan has claimed that his father, Ram Vilas Paswan, was adamantly against aligning with the BJP before the 2014 elections – Narendra Modi's big debut on the central political scene.
“He told me, ‘I will poison myself than go with the BJP,’ and I could not say much after that,” Chirag Paswan said about his father, who was also a multi-term minister at the Centre, first with the Congress-led UPA under Manmohan Singh and then in Modi's BJP-led NDA.
In all, Paswan Senior, who died in 2020, worked under six PMs, his son Chirag underlined.
Chirag also spoke about how “we could not meet Rahul Gandhi for three months despite trying… between November 2013 and mid-February 2014", which was just before Ram Vilas Paswan eventually went with the BJP.
“We met respected Sonia Gandhi ji several times during this time, but they (Sonia/Congress) kept saying a meeting will be fixed with Rahul ji (the then Congress president), but that never happened,” Chirag said, speaking in Hindi, in an interview to Jist.
He said that after his father's “poison, but no BJP” comment, he did not have the gumption to insist, yet the situation became such that the alliance became possible anyhow.
Also read: LJP's Chirag Paswan ends suspense, makes big announcement
He was recalling how his father joined, rather returned to, the NDA after having broken up over the 2002 Gujarat riots when Narendra Modi was chief minister there.
Eye on Oct-Nov Bihar polls
This time, when Chirag is looking to become “the x-factor” or “kingmaker” in the Bihar state polls, likely in October-November, he remains emphatic that he has no problems with the BJP over a split in his party in 2021.
The interview, however, comes out around the time when Chirag has announced that he will contest the assembly elections. "I will contest in all 243 seats. Every segment will see Chirag Paswan fighting with full intensity," said Chirag, 42, but it was not immediately clear if he was speaking about the 243 seats in a figurative sense of being a factor there, or if he would put up candidates of his Lok Janshakti Party (Ramvilas).
Nonetheless, his ambitious announcement comes despite his being a junior partner of the BJP and CM Nitish Kumar's JD(U). And in the interview he is effectively making a steadfast pronouncement of loyalty to the BJP/NDA.
Also read: Chirag Paswan criticises own government in Bihar, says 'Gopal Khemka's murder worrying'
Chirag's record
In the 2020 state polls, Chirag had put up candidates in over 130 seats but only one won. Yet he had claimed he had managed to dent Nitish Kumar – which he said was his aim – and helped the BJP.
The BJP had kept Chirag at a distance at the time and was even seen as the force behind splitting his party, with his uncle Pashupati Nath Paras becoming a BJP ally.
Chirag kept his options open. By the Lok Sabha election of 2024, he was in the BJP's camp, while his uncle was out.
Analysts claims Chirag knows and plays his role as a specific caste group leader. Though, in the latest interview, Chirag said he would want the youth to not be identifying only with caste but with “progress”.
