Jamui: Ram Vilas Paswan's son and young Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader Chirag Paswan made his successful electoral debut five years ago from the reserved parliamentary constituency of Jamui, riding the 'Modi wave'.
The 36-year-old, whose political foray came a few years after his acting debut, had clinched a comfortable victory with a margin of 80,000 votes. Five years on, Paswan is set to face a tough contest in the Bihar constituency, given the altered caste dynamics.
This is the reason why the young leader has hardly stepped out of Jamui in the past several days remaining in the thick of campaigning with heavyweights like CM Nitish Kumar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Rajnath Singh taking out several rallies in his favour.
The young leader faces a tough rival in Rashtriya Lok Samata Party’s Bhudeo Chaudhary, who had won the first general election that the constituency saw after it came into existence in 2008.
Chaudhary, who was the NDA candidate in 2009, fought on a JD(U) ticket, trumping over the runner’s up - Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Shyam Rajak by 30,000 votes. The RLSP candidate is now being fielded by the grand opposition alliance in the state.
Paswan, who has emerged as the de facto leader of the party that his father Ram Vilas Paswan founded nearly two decades ago, has quite a few accomplishments under his belt, apart from the formidable caste arithmetic that the BJP-JD(U)-LJP alliance brings to the table.
Voters of the constituency are cognizant of the developments Chirag undertook in the region during his first term as the MP, which include a central school, a medical college, road connectivity to the village the MP had adopted and a new railway line.
However, caste tends to trump everything else in Bihar's political landscape, and the LJP MP faces an uphill task given the changed dynamics.
The 59-year-old candidate from RLSP, a party led Nitish Kumar’s former associate Upendra Kushwaha, is banking on the support of the Kushwaha community, which has a sizeable presence in the district.
Upendra Kushwaha had charted his course independent of the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal a few years ago with the aim of getting for his community its due.
Kushwaha's exit from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) a few months ago and the BJP's inability to give a ticket to its state vice-president Samrat Chaudhary, who belongs to the community, from anywhere in Bihar is also likely to leave a dent.
Moreover, Jamui’s Rajputs have also expressed their discontent after BJP expelled Putul Kumari and denied her a ticket for entering the fray as an independent candidate from the adjoining Banka district.
Kumari’s husband, the late Digvijay Singh, who has served multiple terms as an MP from the neighbouring constituency and has been a minister in the governments led by Chandra Shekhar and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, is highly regarded by the people in the region.
The constituency will see voting in the first phase on April 11.
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