In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Bihar, his RLJP, which was a member of the National Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, would not receive any seats.
Pashupati Kumar Paras, the president of the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP) and a union minister, resigned from the Modi cabinet on Tuesday. He cited “injustice” for his party’s exclusion from the seat-sharing agreement for the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar.
Although RLJP was a member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), which was led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the party did not receive any seats in the next general elections.
“Our party and we have been the victims of injustice.” As a result, I am resigning from my position as Union minister,” he declared.
The announcement of the seat-sharing details in Bihar by the BJP and its partners occurred one day before to this development. Five tickets have been awarded to the Chirag Paswan faction: Hajipur, Jamui, Vaishali, Samastipur, and Khagaria.
The BJP’s choice to support his nephew Chirag Paswan, who has founded his own party, the LJP (Ram Vilas), for Lok Sabha seats, including those from the Paswan family stronghold of Hajipur, infuriated Paras. Paras claimed and acted as the constituency’s representative.
At the press conference in Delhi, Paras said, “Today, the NDA alliance unveiled the list of 40 candidates for the Bihar Lok Sabha. Our party had five MPs, and I worked with the utmost sincerity.”
He had sided with the BJP in 2021 along with five other RLJP MPs, including his son Prince Raj, after Chirag Paswan chose to run independently for the state assembly elections. Additionally, he opposed the United Progressive Alliance (Janata Dal) joining the NDA in Bihar.
After Chirag and the JD(U), which is now a component of the NDA, fell out badly, Paras and his group removed Chirag from his leadership role in the Lok Sabha and made a point of publicly distancing themselves from the conflict.
The BJP has not yet responded on Paras’ resignation. The BJP is running for 17 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar, where voting will take place over the course of seven phases starting on April 19. The JD(U) will run on 16 seats, while Jitan Ram Manjhi’s Hindustani Awam Morcha and Upendra Kushwaha’s Rashtriya Lok Morcha have been given one seat each.
