Bihar Assembly Elections 2025: Will Chirag Paswan do a 2020 and upset Nitish Kumar’s apple cart?

The JD (U) chief is not that keen on ceding much space to Paswan’s son.

Patna: On Dec 2, 1989, when veteran Socialist Ram Vilas Paswan was sworn in as a Union Minister for the first time in the VP Singh Government, the same day Nitish Kumar too was administered oath in the National Front Government.

However, there was a difference. Paswan was made a Cabinet Minister in charge of the Social Welfare Department while Nitish was sworn in as Minister of State for Agriculture, although both were Lok Sabha members from Bihar, representing the then undivided Janata Dal, from Hajipur and Barh respectively.

Paswan and Nitish were friends since the JP agitation in the mid-70s.
However, Nitish, who is also the JD (U) chief, does not share the same warmth or bonhomie with Ram Vilas’s son Chirag Paswan, now a Union Minister, who heads the Lok Janshakti Party (LJP-R). In fact, Nitish and Chirag have so far never contested any Assembly election as alliance partners.

If Chirag Paswan has been, of late, indicating that his party is willing to contest all the 243 Assembly seats in the ensuing Bihar Assembly Elections, it seems to be a replica of what happened in 2020. During the 2020 election, Chirag, while declaring himself as Narendra Modi’s Hanuman, fielded candidates on 137 seats - mostly against Nitish’s nominees.

While Chirag’s party could win just one and lost the remaining 136 seats, it served the undeclared purpose of the BJP. Chirag badly damaged Nitish’s prospects and reduced his JD (U) to 43 seats in the 243-member House. This was the worst performance by Nitish in the last two decades.

The same scenario seems to be looming large for 2025 too where a resurgent BJP would like to use Nitish to fetch votes but would also like to cut him to size by using Chirag.

“If there is any party in Bihar which has the capacity to contest on all the 243 seats, it is the LJP-R. In 2020, we got six per cent votes. If we contest on all seats in 2025, our vote percentage as well as seats would shore up,” said the LJP-R MP from Jamui, Arun Bharti, who is also the brother-in-law of Chirag Paswan.

“Chirag is either too over-ambitious. Or, he is acting at the behest of the BJP top leadership. Otherwise, how can an NDA ally dare to strike a discordant note and say it is willing to contest on all the 243 seats. Is Nitish not aware of how Chirag damaged him in 2020 and at whose behest?,” argued veteran political scientist Ajay Kumar, who has covered Bihar for three decades.

The LJP reaction on contesting on all the seats came after it became apparent that Nitish was not willing to cede much space to the ‘newbie’ Chirag.

NDA sources said that the broad consensus within the ruling alliance is that the JD (U) and BJP would contest 102 and 101 seats respectively while leaving 20 seats for Chirag and 10 each for Jitan Ram Manjhi’s HAM (Hindustan Awam Morcha) and Upendra Kushwaha’s RLM (Rashtriya Lok Morcha).