Chirag Paswan's LJP to contest Assam, West Bengal assembly elections
"Lok Janshakti Party has decided to contest all seats in West Bengal and Assam in the ensuing elections, after considering the view of State units that it will help in expanding and strengthening Party's base," Khaliq said as quoted by news agency ANI.
The Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) will contest the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal and Assam in order to expand and strengthen the party's base, its secretary general Abdul Khaliq has said. The Bihar-based party is yet to announce whether it will join hands with others or go alone in the West Bengal and Assam elections.
"The Lok Janshakti Party has decided to contest all seats in West Bengal and Assam in the ensuing elections after considering the view of state units that it will help in expanding and strengthening the party's base," Khaliq was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.
The LJP was founded in 2000 by the late Ram Vilas Paswan. The party, currently led by Paswan's son Chirag Paswan, had gone solo and contested in 135 seats during the Bihar assembly election last year and only won a single seat but managed to earn a substantial portion of the vote share.
The LJP has now joined a host of non-Bengal parties and will contest the West Bengal assembly elections alongside the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Shiv Sena, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and others.
The West Bengal assembly election 2021 is set to be a crunch affair with the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP as the two main competitors. The BJP only managed to win three seats in the 2016 West Bengal assembly elections but bagged 18 seats in the state during the 2019 general elections. It managed to rope in former TMC heavyweight Suvendu Adhikary, who will contest against chief minister Mamata Banerjee from Nandigram.
Political tensions are boiling over in the state with rallies sometimes witnessing violence. The BJP has blamed the ruling party for failing to maintain law and order in the state. TMC chief Mamata Banerjee, however, has dismissed these charges.
Banerjee refused to speak during a ceremony on Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose's birth anniversary at Victoria Memorial, Kolkata, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi after a few members of the audience shouted 'Jai Shri Ram', a chant associated with the BJP. The West Bengal assembly also passed a resolution against the Centre's contentious farm laws on Thursday.
In Assam, the BJP emerged as the single largest party in the 2016 assembly elections, winning 60 seats out of the 84 contested while Congress only managed to win 26 out of the 122 they contested. Chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal will be confident of a similar showing in the upcoming elections.
