NDA turmoil in poll-bound Bihar: RLJP quits coalition; HAM chief unhappy

This comes even as Hindustani Awam Morcha has threatened to exit the NDA coalition with Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi alleging that his party was not given a fair deal by the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha polls last year. Bihar will have assembly polls later this year.

Patna: Former Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras on Monday announced that his Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party was no longer with the BJP-led NDA, which has chosen to back his estranged nephew Chirag Paswan.

Paras, whose party came into being in 2021 as a result of the split he engineered in the Lok Janshakti Party, founded by his late brother Ram Vilas Paswan, made the declaration at a function organised here on the occasion of B R Ambedkar's birth anniversary.

He also raised the demand for conferring Bharat Ratna on Ram Vilas Paswan, calling him the "second Ambedkar".

"I have been with the NDA since 2014. Today I announce that henceforth my party shall have no links with the NDA," said Paras, who gave up his cabinet berth ahead of last year's Lok Sabha polls, when his nephew's Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) got five seats to contest as an NDA constituent.

Among the seats contested by LJP(RV), all of which it won, was late Paswan's pocket borough of Hajipur, which Paras had bagged in 2019 and is now represented by Chirag Paswan, a Union minister.

Notably, despite having been passed over by the coalition, Paras had tried, for some time, to have a toehold in the NDA by meeting top leaders like BJP president JP Nadda.

In the bypolls to the five assembly constituencies held last year, his claim on one of the seats was ignored, and his proposed candidate joined the BJP, which gave a ticket to the latter's son.

He was also mortified when the state government made him vacate the bungalow from where he ran his party and allotted it to Chirag.

Paras had parted ways with his nephew, voicing disapproval of his rebellion against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in the 2020 assembly polls.

At the RLJP function, Paras, who formerly served in the Nitish Kumar government, also accused the JD(U) supremo of being "anti-Dalit" and claimed to have got a sense, "upon having toured 22 out of 38 districts", that "Bihar wants to elect a new government".

"In Nitish Kumar's 20-year-long rule, the education system has been ruined in the state, no new industries have been set up, and rampant corruption affects the implementation of all welfare schemes," he alleged.

Paras, who has of late been meeting RJD president Lalu Prasad, however, chose to keep his cards close to the chest and said, "I wish to soon complete the tour of the remaining 16 districts and strengthen the party in all 243 assembly segments of the state." Reacting to the development, Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, another prominent Dalit leader from Bihar, asserted "there will be no adverse impact on the NDA".

"He (Paras) may have made a formal announcement only today. But the writing has been on the wall since he began hobnobbing with Lalu Prasad," said Manjhi, who heads the Hindustani Awam Morcha.