BJP competes with Congress to win over Paswan

With only four MPs, Lok Janashakti Party's Ramvilas Paswan has become the most wanted in the political firmament with both the NDA alliance and the UPA alliance seeing him as a way of furthering their political objectives.

Within the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, there is a strong view that Paswan could be used to shrug off the embarrassment of the taint that Laloo Prasad Yadav's MPs and ministers represent. A section of the Congress believes that Ramvilas Paswan has ambitions of becoming Chief Minister of Bihar.

If the Congress can distance itself from Laloo Yadav and tie up with Paswan, it will at one stroke, change partners in Bihar as well as force Laloo to review ties with the Congress.

In the Lok Sabha elections, Laloo gave the Congress just four seats to contest and gave Ramvilas Paswan 10 seats.

The subtext of the entire tantrum Ramvilas Paswan threw on the issue of the allocation of the railway ministership, was with a view to distancing himself from Laloo Yadav.

Paswan may have now made peace with his portfolio, but his supporters are still sulky that their leader was not given the Railway ministry and been given a set of portfolios "jinka poora mantralaya railway ministry ke reception mein at sakta hai" (the office of the entire portfolio could fit in the reception of the railway ministry).

Within the NDA, the delayed effect of the party's debacle in Bihar, is showing only now. JD U leader George Fernandes believes that it is Paswan's chief ministerial ambitions that represent a major fault line in the UPA.

The JD(U) lost a huge chunk of its vote percentage to candidates set up by Paswan. If Paswan and JD U could reach an agreement in Bihar, Paswan could be in a position to dump Laloo Yadav and the JD U could bid farewell to the BJP.

A meeting of the JD U is taking place in Patna on June 5 and 6. Elections to the Bihar assembly are scheduled to take place in February next year.

Political posturing for the elections has already begun. The JD(U) feels that riots in Gujarat cost the JD(U) dear in Bihar. Therefore, the party should review its choice of partners in the state.

The section led by former railway minister Nitish Kumar wants to break free of the BJP, while the faction owing allegiance to George Fernandes wants a broad umbrella alliance of JD(U), BJP and Paswan, the original winning team in undivided Bihar that won 40 out of the 56 Lok Sabha seats.

Ramvilas Paswan walked out of the NDA because it did a deal with Mayawati, whom Paswan considers his only rival in India. Now that Mayawati is non-aligned, there is scope for his party to deal with either the ruling UPA or the Opposition NDA, with an eye to Bihar.

With anti-incumbency strong against Laloo Yadav, Paswan obviously wants to emerge as the hub around which both opposition and ruling party consensus could emerge. He is likely to make his moves in the next few weeks.