Why is Chirag Paswan keeping the BJP on the edge?

On August 30, a meeting between Lok Janshakti Party chief Chirag Paswan and Union Home Minister Amit Shah did not end with routine social media posts – it made headlines. It was the first time Paswan was meeting a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader after publicly opposing the central government on a slew of matters recently.

An ally of the BJP in the ruling National Democratic Alliance, Paswan’s party has just five members in the Lok Sabha. Yet, Paswan has been punching above his weight, taking credit for the government’s rethink on the Waqf Bill, and its rollback of lateral entry recruitments where mid-level bureaucrats were being hired by bypassing the established norms of reserving positions for Dalits, Adivasis and the backward castes. Paswan belongs to the Dalit Paswan community, also known as the Dusadhs.

Over the last month, Paswan also joined the Opposition’s call for a nationwide caste census, and supported a Bharat Bandh against the Supreme Court’s decision to allow sub-classification in reservation for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes – the only party in the ruling alliance to do so.

Not just on matters of policy, Paswan has taken a belligerent stance in electoral politics too. Last month, he said that his party could contest the Jharkhand Assembly elections on its own if there was no consensus over seat sharing in the National Democratic Alliance. The polls are scheduled later this year.

Paswan’s comments have led to speculation that all is not well between his party and the BJP.

The speculation gathered steam after Shah held a meeting with Paswan’s estranged uncle Pashupati Paras on August 26. After a split in the party in 2021, the uncle was recognised as the leader of the Lok Sabha parliamentary unit of the Lok Janshakti Party. But when it came to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP put its bet on Paswan, whose faction got to contest five seats as part of the alliance, while the Paras group got none.

The recent meetings between Paras and BJP leaders are being seen as the Hindutva party’s tactic to counter the threat of Paswan turning rogue.

In his public appearances, however, Paswan has maintained that his actions are not against the alliance and that he remains loyal to Narendra Modi.

Observers of Bihar politics told Scroll that Paswan’s recent posturing is aimed at keeping the BJP under pressure ahead of Bihar state elections scheduled to be held late next year.

What is Chirag aiming for?

In more than one interview in August, Paswan has deflected questions about whether there was a rift between his party and the BJP. “Nothing can come between me and my prime minister,” he told ABP News on August 29.

This is in keeping with an older pattern where Paswan’s proclamations of allegiance to Modi have gone hand in hand with turbulence in the alliance.

During the Bihar state elections in 2020, Paswan openly campaigned against Nitish Kumar, the chief ministerial candidate of the alliance, while declaring that he was ready to “cut open his heart” for Modi, like Hindu deity Hanuman did for his mentor Ram. The Lok Janshakti Party even fielded candidates on seats that the Janata Dal (United) was contesting, scuttling its chances.

Cut to 2024, Paswan seems to be employing a similar strategy. Pushpendra Kumar, a former professor at the Patna centre of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, told Scroll that Paswan’s decision to oppose the government’s decisions on caste-related matters reflected his larger ambition of being recognised as a Dalit leader and not just the leader of Dusadhs.

“He recognises that there is nobody who can be called a pan-Bihar Dalit leader,” Kumar said. “He also recognises an opportunity here because the BJP has performed poorly in SC-reserved seats in the Lok Sabha elections and it does not want to be seen as antagonising a Dalit leader.”

But projecting himself as a representative of Dalit interests was possibly not his only aim. Patna-based journalist Umesh Kumar Ray said that Paswan was also preparing ground for getting a fair share of seats in next year’s Bihar assembly elections.

During the 2020 elections, the Lok Janshakti Party was left out of the seat sharing arrangement of the National Democratic Alliance after Paswan targeted Nitish Kumar. As a result, the alliance had to accommodate one partner less, and the Janata Dal (United) and the BJP contested 115 and 110 of the 243 seats in the Assembly. The Lok Janshakti Party contested 134 seats, and even as it dented the vote share of the Janata Dal (United) in several constituencies, Paswan’s outfit managed to win only one seat.

Ray said that this time, Paswan did not want to be content by playing the spoilsport for the National Democratic Alliance. “Paswan’s party won all five of the seats it contested in Lok Sabha. If he maintains a similar strike rate in Bihar, he could be in a position to call the shots within the government,” Ray said.

DM Diwakar, former director of the AN Sinha Institute of Social Sciences in Patna, agreed that Paswan had the assembly elections on his mind. “What else can explain his stand on the Waqf Bill or contesting Jharkhand elections on his own?” Diwakar questioned. “These are not about Dalit issues.”

Diwakar said it was possible that Paswan even harboured aspirations for the chief minister’s chair in Bihar. “He was running the ‘Bihar first, Bihari first’ campaign ahead of the Lok Sabha elections to create his own identity,” Diwakar pointed out. “He has had to recalibrate after Nitish came back to the NDA, but remember the BJP does not have a chief minister face in Bihar, and Nitish is not a long-term plan.”

How is the BJP viewing Paswan?

Paswan’s gambit seems to have taken the BJP by surprise. “The expectation was that Nitish could be the one difficult to handle, Chirag came from outside the syllabus,” said Pushpendra Kumar.

But now that Paswan has shown his intentions, the BJP cannot ignore him. Kumar added: “The Lok Janshakti Party has a solid 5% voter base which it has managed to hold across many elections. In a tight contest like Bihar is expected to be, the BJP cannot afford to lose him.”

Courting his uncle could be effective in sending across a message to Paswan, but was unlikely to have an electoral impact because the Paras faction hardly has any presence on ground, experts said.

This leaves the BJP with the more extreme option of breaking away some leaders from the Paswan camp, observers in Bihar said. After rumours of another split in the Paswan faction circulated in Patna, three party MPs publicly denied such possibilities. “When your MPs are forced to make such statements, and especially when the BJP is involved in the matter, it is not good news,” Pushpendra said.

Most political observers, however, think it is unlikely the Lok Janshakti Party-BJP tussle would escalate, with the BJP itself turning cautious on matters of caste, and Paswan realising the limitations of his ambitions.

“One needs to understand that Paswan does not have options outside the alliance [with BJP],” said Diwakar. “He gains nothing from joining the Opposition ranks. He would lose his ministry [at the Centre] and in Tejashwi Yadav, there is already a chief minister candidate in the opposing camp.”