Lok Sabha elections 2019: Lok Janshakti Party faces uphill task of reasserting its political stance

The Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), founded by Ram Vilas Paswan, faces an uphill task of reasserting its political standing in the Lok Sabha elections, after the party chief has virtually passed on the baton to his son Chirag Paswan.

Serving his eighth term as the MP from Hajipur Lok Sabha seat, which Ram Vilas Paswan has won with record margins on more than one occasion, the septuagenarian leader has made it clear that he will not be contesting the polls and would seek re-entry into Parliament through the Rajya Sabha.

His party, however, will be contesting six out of the 40 seats in Bihar, the same number the LJP had won in 2014 in alliance with the BJP and chief minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United).

The success of his party in these six seats which include brother Ram Chandra Paswan’s Samastipur, and Jamui represented by Chirag Paswan would show the esteem in which people still hold the legacy of the union minister, whose frequent change of loyalties has earned him the colourful sobriquet ‘mausam vaigyanik’, meaning a weatherman who has the uncanny knack of sensing which way the wind blows.

The party had come into being in 2000 following a bitter feud with Sharad Yadav, the veteran socialist leader, who at that time headed the JD(U) with which Paswan was aligned.

Since 2002, Paswan has changed his loyalties, meeting with successes and failures, like his own defeat in the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

The JD(U)’s exit from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 2013 made the BJP look for new allies and the opportunity was seized by Paswan.

It is believed that the emergence of India as a new economic power under Modi’s plank of development became an obvious justification for Paswan’s realignment in the larger interest of the people.

If voters re-endorse this plank of the NDA, ‘mausam’ (weather) would turn out to be favourable for the LJP too.