CHIRAG SET TO PROVE METTLE SANS DAD
LJP (RV) chief Chirag Paswan faces a huge challenge to win Hajipur Lok Sabha constituency by an ‘impressive’ margin to take his father Ram Vilas Paswan’s legacy further with aplomb.
Hajipur Lok Sabha constituency will go to polls in the Phase 5 on May 20. Ram Vilas represented Hajipur seat (reserved SCs) in the LS eight times. Chirag’s uncle and former union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras is the sitting MP.
Chirag won the Lok Sabha election from Jamui in 2014 and 2019, primarily by riding on Modi’s wave and also with father on his side. But now after the death of Ram Vilas in 2020, he has to retain the Hajipur seat, his family bastion, at all costs. RJD has fielded senior leader and former minister Shivchandra Ram.
PASWAN BASTION
Hajipur is a bastion of the Paswans since long as Ram Vilas won the seat eight times between 1977 and 2019, only losing it twice, in 1984 and 2009. In 1984, he was defeated by Ram Ratan Ram of Congress. Ram Vilas contested the election as Lok Dal candidate. He suffered another defeat in 2009 when former chief minister Ram Sunder Das contesting election as JDU candidate
trounced him. Chirag may be looking forward to winning the seat and finally stepping into his father’s shoes.
THE USP
Ram Vilas, who passed away in 2020, fielded his brother Pashupati Kumar Paras from the seat in 2019. After winning the election and death of Ram Vilas, Paras plotted against Chirag by engineering a split in the party. Paras even went to the extent of claiming he was the ‘political heir’ of Ram Vilas as Chirag would only inherit his father’s financial assets by law.
So, Chirag has a challenging task cut out in battle against his wily uncle Paras and marginalising him further in Paswans’ home turf. So if Chirag does not win the election by a huge margin, he will miss a chance to prove that he is the only claimant to the political legacy of his father. But if he wins impressively, he will decimate his uncle further and emerge as
the sole leader of Hajipur from the Paswan family.
DECODING THE FIGHT
People in general are discussing local issues but the caste factor will overshadow everything else.
Social worker Navneet Kumar said problems of people living here were virtually missing from the election discourse as caste factor would finally overshadow all other issues. Caste arithmetic has made the contest between Chirag and RJD candidate Ram interesting.
While the RJD candidate is mainly pinning hopes on consolidation of Yadav and Muslim votes and also support from some other castes including Ravidas community to which he himself belongs, the NDA is hopeful of getting substantial votes of nonYadav OBCs, EBCs and Dalits, particularly Paswans.