Bihar’s socialist icon Ram Vilas Paswan dies

Veteran leader, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) patron and union minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution, Ram Vilas Paswan, who breathed his last at

Veteran leader, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) patron and union minister for consumer affairs, food and public distribution, Ram Vilas Paswan, who breathed his last at a Delhi hospital on Thursday, leaves behind a big void in the national politics.

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His son and MP Chirag Paswan gave the news through his tweet.

Bihar politics has been known to revolve around the big three, Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan, since the 1990s and despite often remaining in opposing camps, their personal equation was never affected.

Having remained in active politics for five decades, he was one of the tallest Dalit leaders in the Indian politics. He had founded the LJP in 2000 and made it an important cog in Bihar politics by dint of his hard work. He was known to have an uncanny knack of reading people’s mood and political wind.

He got elected to the Bihar Legislative Assembly for the first time in 1969 as a member of the Samyukta Socialist Party and never looked back thereafter, though he did not have any political legacy behind him. However, he leaves behind a legacy that would be hard to match.

He was very active in the JP’s students’ movement as a student of Patna University and was also arrested. His hard work paid off and in 1977 he became MP for the first time at just 31 years of age from Hajipur on a Janata Party ticket. Since then, he became synonymous with Hajipur.

He represented Hajipur Lok Sabha constituency eight times till 2019.

In 1989 he outdid his own record by increasing his winning margin to over five-lakh. He became the union minister for the first time the same year.

In 2019, he decided not to contest and went to the Rajya Sabha from the NDA. He was the RS member even from 2010-2014. He had the distinction of working with six Prime Ministers, which speaks volumes of his ability to adjust and adapt.

Perhaps, it was his ability to plan deftly that resulted in his decision to pass on the baton of the LJP to his son Chirag Paswan in 2019 and stay away from the rigours of electoral politics, which he was quite adept at.

He was also committed to his family and was not unfazed when some people asked him about projecting them in politics. He often said that his brothers stood by him when he was a struggler and it was his duty to help them come up.

It was his stature and ability to get along with all that has left leaders of all hues sad, with condolences pouring in from everywhere, cutting across the party lines.