This time, all is not well in the house of NDA, admitted one of its Bihar partners, Upendra Kushwaha Tuesday. A lot has to do with what started 30 years ago.
A JD(U) leader close to party supremo and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar tries to convey the sense of the rancour, recounting the latter’s reaction to the share of Chirag Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (RV) in the deal struck by the NDA. “The CM went through the list, and when he saw that some seats held by the JD(U) or where it had finished runner-up last time were going to the LJP (RV), he was livid. ‘How can he (Chirag) get Rajgir (SC) and Sonbarsa (SC)? Go and settle this with the BJP’, the CM shouted,” said the JD(U) leader.
There are many reasons behind Nitish’s distrust of Chirag who, many in the JD(U) believe, was propped up by the BJP in 2020 to cut into its votes. In the final count, the then undivided LJP, which fought independently, got more votes than the JD(U) in 32 seats; in 26 of them, the LJP’s votes were more than the margin with which the JD(U) lost. In 5 other seats, the LJP was a runner-up. The BJP emerged as the second largest party, with 74 seats, while the JD(U) ended up far behind its partner, at 43 seats.
The JD(U) got back later by weaning away the only leader of the LJP who won in 2020; the MLA had scraped through in Begusarai’s Matihani seat by 333 votes.
In talks this time round, the JD(U) refused to concede the Matihani seat to the LJP (RV).
Forced to climb down from its demand of at least 1 more seat than the BJP, to an equal share of 101 seats each this time, the JD(U) remains suspicious of the BJP’s intentions regarding Chirag.
The Paswan scion had fought the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as an NDA partner and, after winning 5 of the 5 seats he contested in Bihar, was accommodated as a Union minister. In the current elections, his LJP (RV) has got 29 seats in the NDA, leaving just 6 each for other smaller allies Rashtriya Lok Manch and Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular).
All this, Bihar watchers believe, is enough reason for the flare-up of animosity that goes way back, to when Nitish and Chirag’s father Ram Vilas Paswan were just starting out as leaders. (Ram Vilas Paswan died just before the last Assembly polls.)
The era was the mid-1990s, when the Socialist trio of Ram Vilas, Lalu Prasad and Nitish were just emerging on the Bihar horizon. Ram Vilas, a Dalit leader, was already ahead in the electoral stakes, having won his first election as an MLA in 1969 from Alauli (Khagaria). In the 1989 Janata Dal government led by V P Singh, Ram Vilas found a place as Union minister.
Lalu, a leader of the Yadavs, the single-largest caste group of Bihar, marked his arrival by winning from the Chhapra (now Saran) Lok Sabha seat in 1977. In 1990, he was named the CM of the Janata Dal government in Bihar, rewriting the state’s caste politics.
A Kurmi leader, Nitish tasted electoral success last, winning for the first time in 1985, from the Harnaut Assembly seat. He rose quickly after that, and in 1989, moved to the Lok Sabha after defeating a Congress stalwart from Barh. Like Ram Vilas, he was inducted by V P Singh as a Union minister.
Soon, the paths of the three parted. Nitish was the first to come out of the Janata Dal to form the Samata Party with George Fernandes in 1994. Lalu formed the RJD in 1997, and Ram Vilas floated the LJP in 2000.
Giving an insight into his rivalry with Nitish, Paswan told this correspondent in an interview in 2015 that, in 2000, the then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee offered him the post of Bihar CM after the NDA won in the state. Paswan said he refused as the NDA did not have the numbers, and he was surprised that Nitish readily took up the offer.
When Nitish could not pass the floor test days later, Paswan reportedly could not hide his glee. And a great Bihar rivalry began.
Paswan also admitted in the same interview that when he quit the NDA in 2002, the Godhra riots in Gujarat under a BJP government were not his sole reason. He was also upset about Nitish being elevated as Union Railway Minister in the Vajpayee government, while he was moved to a less high-profile portfolio.
After the February 2005 Assembly polls, in which the LJP won 29 seats, Nitish is believed to have approached Paswan to help him become CM. However, Paswan didn’t lend his backing to anyone in the hung House, and a re-election was held, in which Nitish came roaring to power. He has remained CM since.
Sources close to Chirag say that he regrets that with his 2005 move, Paswan also squandered what could have been a historic chance of becoming CM himself.
After he returned as CM in November 2005, Nitish dealt a blow to Paswan by carving out a ‘Mahadalit’ category for more than a dozen government schemes. It covered all the Scheduled Castes in the state barring the Paswans. Ram Vilas slammed the move as “unconstitutional”.
Both Paswan and Nitish have been flexible when it comes to the NDA though, and in 2013, after one of Nitish’s exits from the NDA, Paswan joined the alliance before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls reportedly on the urging of Chirag. In the Modi wave election, the LJP won six Lok Sabha seats, while the JD(U) was relegated to 2 (a drop of 18 seats).
In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, both Paswan and Nitish were partners of the NDA. However, they kept their distance. A senior JD(U) leader said: “There was only a working arrangement between the two parties.”
An LJP (RV) leader said: “Nitish went for the Rajya Sabha nomination filing by Paswan in 2019 unwillingly. Chirag still remembers the humiliation of being made to wait.”