Chirag and Tejashwi: A tale of two Bihar GenNext leaders - Hindustan Times
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Chirag and Tejashwi: A tale of two Bihar GenNext leaders

Jun 22, 2021 02:17 PM IST

The idea of Paswan joining the Mahagathbandhan, the grand alliance against the Nitish Kumar-led NDA government, would bring together two young leaders who share strikingly similar circumstances in their political careers but have ended up in very different places

As Chirag Paswan fights to wrest control of the party he presided over, and his father founded, there are subtle signs of possible realignments in Bihar’s politics.

Patna-Oct.20,2020-LJP chief Chirag Paswan with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav during ‘Shradh Karma’ function of former Union Minister late Ramvilas Paswan at Lok Janshakti Party office in Patna. Bihar India on Tuesday Oct 20,2020( Photo by Santosh Kumar/ Hindustan Times) PREMIUM
Patna-Oct.20,2020-LJP chief Chirag Paswan with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav during ‘Shradh Karma’ function of former Union Minister late Ramvilas Paswan at Lok Janshakti Party office in Patna. Bihar India on Tuesday Oct 20,2020( Photo by Santosh Kumar/ Hindustan Times)

Ever since Paswan’s colleagues in Parliament came together to declare that he no longer represented them or the values of the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) and declared his uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras as the new LJP leader, there are voices from within the party’s erstwhile rival, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), to embrace Chirag Paswan.

The idea of Paswan joining the Mahagathbandhan or MGB, the grand alliance against the Nitish Kumar-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, would bring together two young leaders who share strikingly similar circumstances in their political careers but have ended up in very different places.

The MGB option

“I think Tejashwi Yadav should come together with Chirag Paswan,” said veteran RJD leader Shivanand Tiwari, of the former deputy chief minister and RJD founder Lalu Prasad’s son and late Dalit leader and former minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s son. “The decision has to be taken by Paswan but I think eventually, they will come together because Nitish Kumar will ensure that Paswan is not be a part of the NDA anymore, so the options are limited.”

“The possibility of wooing him remains open,” said another MGB ally and left leader Dipankar Bhattacharya. “They may be thinking on that and realignment is also possible.”

To be sure, any such realignment will not be in a hurry and at present, Paswan is too busy trying to claim his father’s legacy. He has already announced a roadshow across the state to coincide with his father’s birthday next month.

Ram Vilas Paswan founded the LJP in 2000 but the nine-time parliamentarian made his mark as an anti-Emergency crusader and socialist leader in the 70s. He chose his son as the president of the party and his successor in 2019, a year before he died and at stake in the battle for LJP is the 6% Paswan vote in Bihar. In a state that is deeply caste-conscious, the alliance of Tejashwi Yadav and Paswan would mean the combination of RJD’s Muslim (16.8%) and Yadav (14%) vote bank getting an additional boost of the Paswan vote. And that’s why, Tiwari isn’t the only one anticipating Paswan’s entry into MGB.

Tejashwi’s sister and RJD MP Misa Yadav has also been retweeting Paswan’s hurt outbursts against those who rebelled against him.


And the spokespersons of both RJD and the Congress have been laying out the red carpet for Paswan. Congress leader Prem Chandra Mishra invited him to join on Wednesday and RJD legislator and chief spokesperson Bhai Birendra also expressed confidence that Paswan would emerge victorious as the true inheritor of Ram Vilas Paswan’s legacy.

But even as a possible process of rapprochement may be in the offing, with its inherent challenges, the one thing that both MGB supporters and even critics in the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) all agree on is that the 38-year-old Paswan and the 32-year-old Yadav share a great deal of commonality in terms of background, although they are at completely different phases of their careers at this time.

For Bihar’s boys, the allure of Bollywood and cricket

Politics wasn’t the obvious career choice for either Paswan or Yadav.

Paswan started out as a Bollywood actor but his acting stint proved short-lived. As his IMDB page shows, Paswan acted in one major film called Miley Na Miley Hum with Kangana Ranaut in 2011. In those days, Paswan senior was part of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the son’s appearances on Delhi’s political high table were strictly as part of his father’s personal entourage.

Just as the film’s commercial failure pushed Paswan into taking more of an interest in politics, Yadav was also waiting on the reserve bench of the Delhi Daredevils from 2008-2012. If Paswan was spending time chasing casting agents in Mumbai, Yadav had been away from Bihar, enrolling in Delhi Public School but focussing more on state-level cricket. By 2013, the cricketing career was over and Yadav was now in full-time campaign mode with his father, Lalu Prasad.

So, their entry was almost simultaneous, with the only difference being that Paswan, like his father, chose the national stage while Yadav limited himself to the state. His sister, Misa, would go on to occupy the role of being the party’s representative in Rajya Sabha. When Paswan won his first election from the Lok Sabha seat Jamui in 2014, the Narendra Modi wave left a major impression on him. According to NDA insiders, it was Paswan who was influencing his father to leave the UPA and move towards an alliance with Modi.

The Modi wave was also the prime motivator for Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad to bury their differences and join hands in the same year and that’s how they caused a major upset for the BJP, just a year later. Yadav’s launch into electoral politics when he contested from Raghopur in 2015 also led to him becoming deputy CM to Nitish Kumar.

“This gave Tejashwi a great grooming period,” said the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) research cell in the state, Santosh Pathak. “Even when Nitish Kumar went back to NDA two years later in 2017, he could hone his knowledge of the state and interactions as the Leader of Opposition. Paswan was pushed into it more abruptly when his father died last year.’’

The dynastic advantage

But while there may have been a difference in the nature of their political socialisation in the early years, both men have the privilege that comes from being from a long, established political family.

If Yadav is the son of two former CMs (his mother Rabri Devi was also CM of Bihar from 1997-2005 when Lalu Prasad had to resign facing corruption charges in the fodder scam) and a one-time Union minister (Prasad was rail minister during UPA-1), Paswan continued his father’s legacy of being part of national level politics.

Their fathers belonged to different platforms and eventually had distinct careers (Prasad was a much bigger mass leader than Paswan), but at one point, they were a part of a cohort that represented the politics of social justice on the same side of the fence. Slogans such as “Lalu, VP, Ram Vilas- Ek Rupaye mein teen glass” (Lalu, VP, Ram Vilas- You get three for the price of one) may not be a glowing tribute but it illustrates just how much the two families are part of the iconography of the state.

The result, however, is that both the sons face accusations from their contemporaries of being to the manor born and of having it too easy.

“Lalu arrived on a buffalo and Tejashwi comes in a chopper,” says Shivanand Tiwari. “The boys are also not used to working as hard. The seniors were much more rooted and hard working. This will hopefully change else they will harm themselves. They have four years to change for the next elections. If the Kumar government goes, then who will come?”

The “lack of hard work” tag is difficult to brush off for a second-generation leader. Yadav had a chance to fight that off post 2017 when his father was in jail and his party’s fortunes depended on his shoulders. His aides point out that in the lead up to the elections and till the pandemic put an end to his travels, Yadav visited each district of his state more than once.

Being an MP, Paswan also has the reputation of being seen in Delhi more than in Bihar, though that may now change. Tiwari believes that the real Paswan will emerge from the journey that he will undertake now, the one where he acquaints himself with the people of the state and fights for control of LJP.

The battle within the family and the party

In a way, the inner-party struggle or intra-family rivalry is a rite of passage in the evolution of all regional parties, from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) where MK Stalin had to fight off a challenge from his older brother MK Alagiri before he became founder M Karunanidhi’s chosen heir, to Akhilesh Yadav fighting off challenge from his uncle Shivpal Yadav before he became undisputed chief of Samajwadi Party.

Paswan fell out of sync with his party men when he started criticising Nitish Kumar ahead of the 2020 elections despite being part of the NDA family, a move that led to his eventual walkout of the alliance.

According to one of the MPs who have now gone with his uncle Paras, Paswan was a good leader till he took a distinct line on Nitish Kumar. “Chirag read the script totally wrong and I pointed it out then but no one paid any heed. It was a huge blunder, I don’t know who was advising him,” said Mehboob Ali Kaiser. Kaiser realised that the move wasn’t going to fare well for LJP and so encouraged his son to be a part of Tejashwi’s team; Yusuf Kaiser is now an RJD MLA.

While the BJP has repeatedly denied this, LJP insiders believe that Paswan was working on BJP’s instructions so that Kumar would be cut to size. The interesting thing, however, is that Paswan’s move of fighting outside of the NDA also impacted the MGB, cutting into the secular vote.

“He really thought he was a kingmaker. If Chirag had remained in the NDA, there was no contest for the NDA in many constituencies, it would have led to a sweep. He is paying the price for it,” says Kaiser.

But Paswan’s aides allege that the rebellion is a JD(U) conspiracy timed to ensure that he is not inducted into the Narendra Modi Cabinet, which is expected soon. The other members of his team were enticed with the promise of accommodation but the question really is, what happens to the Paras faction of the LJP when the next round of elections are due in 2024.

While things look relatively calmer now, things weren’t all smooth in the Yadav clan not too long ago. Tejashwi’s older brother Tej Pratap would often speak out to challenge his authority. Even party veterans such as Raghuvansh Prasad resigned from the RJD shortly before his death from Covid in September 2020. Prasad’s critique of RJD’s leadership was the same that Paswan faced from his colleagues—of inaccessibility. “These days, the state party headquarter is out of bounds for ordinary workers. Big chains have been put on the main gates to restrict the entry of people. Is it the way to run a party,” Prasad had said in January last year.

“They both haven’t lessons from the past and their respective fathers have failed to teach them,” said JD(U)’s Ajay Alok, “They lack fighting spirit and flexibility. They both became active in 2014. after that, Chirag Paswan disappeared after winning. Similarly, Tejashwi Yadav visited Raghopur less than 20 times since 2015.’’

The future trajectory

The JD(U) is politically obliged to criticise both men but even Paswan’s critics agree that he may be down right now, but this is nowhere near the end of his story. Going by political precedents, the son has usually been the inheritor of the father’s political legacy.

Paswan’s kingmaker dreams turned sour in 2020 but no one rules out that he will one day have the same kind of influence his father did, swinging a party’s fortune by his presence. The example that Bihar-watchers cite is of the 1999 Lok Sabha election where Ram Vilas Paswan allied with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government getting the BJP-JD(U) to win a majority of the 54 Lok Sabha seats (before Jharkhand was carved out) in the state. Just months later, however, Nitish Kumar and Ram Vilas Paswan failed to come up with an alliance for the assembly elections and the RJD came back to power in 2000.

“The future is very bright for Chirag Paswan,” said Kaiser, not limiting in his praise even though he belongs to the rival camp, “It won’t take him long to get back his party, I am sure he will take over the party again. Who knows, in the future, Chirag and Tejashwi may come together.”

Even Tejashwi Yadav’s key aide Sanjay Yadav praises Paswan. “They are both young and both are capable in taking their father’s legacies forward”, said Yadav, “They both command authority over their respective vote banks.”

And in the end, that’s the key factor. Their ideologies may be completely different with Paswan going so far to say that he was like Hanuman with Modi residing like Ram in his heart, but as Nitish Kumar’s stint with both sides shows, loyalties aren’t fixed and an existing position has not been a major deterrent in the state in choosing other political pathways. The 2024 elections will be the litmus test in figuring out if Paswan inherits his father’s legacy or whether the five rebel MPs, whose terms run out then, will bag the LJP mantle.

“I don’t want to comment on their internal matter but Chirag Paswan may carry the legacy. He is articulate and educated,’’ said former Union minister and Congress leader Shakeel Ahmad.

An immediate indication of which way things will go will emerge from the impending Cabinet reshuffle at the Centre—how many JD(U) or Paras-faction LJP members are added to the Modi government and if the allies are satisfied with the share they get of the ministerial allocation.

In some ways, Yadav has openly been wooing Paswan, speaking out in his support even in the run-up to last year’s elections. Will the older of the two dynasts respond finally? In that answer could lie the future of Bihar’s politics and the future of the two men who will play a role in the state in the decades ahead.

Unveiling 'Elections 2024: The Big Picture', a fresh segment in HT's talk show 'The Interview with Kumkum Chadha', where leaders across the political spectrum discuss the upcoming general elections. Watch Now!

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  • ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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    Sunetra Choudhury is the National Political Editor of the Hindustan Times. With over two decades of experience in print and television, she has authored Black Warrant (Roli,2019), Behind Bars: Prison Tales of India’s Most Famous (Roli,2017) and Braking News (Hachette, 2010). Sunetra is the recipient of the Red Ink award in journalism in 2016 and Mary Morgan Hewett award in 2018.

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