Chirag Paswan Factor Could Be Here To Stay, Exit Polls Predict

Chirag Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) is likely to make its presence felt this time in Bihar, exit polls have suggested. His party, exit polls suggested, is likely to win 11 of the 29 seats it contested.  While the figure is less than half, it could substantially add to the NDA score -- which, an aggregate of nine exit polls show -- could be 147. The figure comprises 60 per cent of the state's 243 seats.

In 2020, the LJP ran independently and won just one of the 137 seats it contested, pushing political experst to write him off. But the party had managed to eat into the votes of Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal United, bringing it down from the 71 seats it got in 2015 to just 43. 

Exit polls do not always get it right. But the LJP(RV) is hoping that they garner enough of a score to demand the post of Nitish Kumar's deputy.

Chirag Paswan had earlier said that if the NDA manages a decent score, his party would stake claim to the biggest post after the Chief Minister. 

Exit polls have already said the 43-year-old, who calls himself a Yuva Bihari, is also the third choice for the post of the state's Chief Minister. The first preference is Rashtriya Janata Dal's Tejashwi Yadav, who has pipped Nitish Kumar to the top spot by only two per cent votes.  

The LJP(RV) chief has already made it clear that he would stick with the NDA, whatever be the election results. "I love the Prime Minister too much," he had said in a recent interview. 

There has been speculation that the BJP is grooming a successor to the 74-year-old Nitish Kumar and the LJP chief could be the top candidate. This had particularly captured the imagination of many, powered by the unprecedented 29 seats allotted to the party by the BJP. But later, dashing the hopes of Paswan supporters, the NDA confirmed that Kumar would stay on in the top post for this term. 

Formed in 2000, the Lok Janshakti Party was initially part of the National Democratic Alliance, which had a government in the Centre at the time. It parted ways with the NDA in 2002 following the Godhra riots and joined the UPA in 2004, where the then party chief, Ram Vilas Paswan, held key ministerial portfolios.

Ram Vilas Paswan was seen by many as the consummate weatherman who could accurately predict which way the political winds were blowing. In 2014, he got back to the NDA fold and held key portfolios in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet.

After his death, the LJP split but Chirag Paswan, heading the Ramvilas Paswan faction, is seen to have come out on top, displaying the political acumen of his father.