The opposition and the NDA are ready to hold respective meetings with their allies on Tuesday. The NDA meeting will be held in Delhi on Tuesday evening, while the two-day meeting of 26 opposition parties got underway in Bengaluru on Monday evening, to be continued on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Chirag Paswan has decided to join the NDA.
Chirag Paswan, the leader of the key faction of the Lok Janshakti Party, will join the NDA, the BJP announced on Monday evening shortly after his meeting with the party’s key strategist Amit Shah. “Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) leader Chirag Paswan has decided to join NDA. I welcome him to the NDA family,” BJP chief JP Nadda announced on the eve of the NDA show of strength in Delhi.
Chirag Paswan, the political heir to his father Ram Vilas Paswan, had walked out of the NDA ahead of the last state election in Bihar over his disagreements with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. While it cut down Mr Kumar’s numbers and gave the BJP the upper hand in the state, it left Paswan Junior isolated. His uncle, Pashupati Paras, who had the support of four MPs, remained with the NDA.
Earlier in the day, Paswan met Union Home Minister Amit Shah to hold a discussion to finalise his party’s share of Lok Sabha seats in Bihar for the 2024 election. In 2019, the undivided Lok Janshakti Party under Ram Vilas Paswan, Chirag’s father, contested six Lok Sabha seats and also received a Rajya Sabha seat as part of its seat-sharing deal with the BJP.
To join the NDA alliance, Chirag Paswan wanted the BJP to stick to the same arrangement under his father despite his uncle, Pashupati Kumar Paras’s party — Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party, a faction of the Lok Janshakti Party — being already part of the ruling alliance.
Chirag Paswan’s demand also includes the BJP conceding to him the Hajipur Lok Sabha seat, a pocket borough of his father for decades but currently represented by Paras in Parliament. Sources in Paswan’s party told PTI news agency that he wanted the BJP to clarify about his share of Lok Sabha and also assembly seats in Bihar before formalising their alliance.
