Union minister Chirag Paswan has caused a flutter by stating he would choose to give up his ministerial berth instead of a compromise on his principles, in keeping with the precedent set by his late father Ram Vilas Paswan.
Paswan, who heads Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas), made the remark at a function of the party's SC/ST cell here on Monday evening, even as he maintained that he "will be in the NDA till Narendra Modi is my Prime Minister".
Responding to questions from journalists about his cryptic remark in his speech, "I will not hesitate to renounce my ministerial berth as my father did", the young leader claimed he was speaking about the Congress-led UPA.
"My father was a minister in the UPA government too. And too many things took place back then which were detrimental to the interests of Dalits. Even pictures of Baba Saheb Ambedkar were not put up at public events. So we parted ways," he said.
Paswan is understood to have played an instrumental role in getting his father to agree to a realignment with the BJP-led NDA ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Showering praise on Modi, Paswan said the current regime has been sensitive to his concerns about Dalits, and cited the example of the Centre's stand on the creamy layer and lateral entry into bureaucracy to buttress his point.
However, sources in the NDA as well as the INDIA bloc here were of the view that there was more to Paswan's rhetoric in his speech than the anodyne explanation he offered later.
Sources in both rival coalitions also felt that raking up the resignation of his father was more of an embarrassment to the BJP than the Congress since it was during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government that Paswan senior gave up his cabinet berth in protest against the 2002 riots of Gujarat.
He subsequently joined UPA and enjoyed a ministerial stint for five years.
In 2009, he ended up losing his own Lok Sabha seat and was dropped in the second Manmohan Singh ministry, understandably as retribution for turning his back on the Congress and forming a parallel front with RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, who was similarly denied a cabinet berth.
Sources also felt that Chirag Paswan, who has been touring flood-hit areas of Bihar to oversee relief work, was trying to expand his base and come out of the shadow of the BJP, and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar whom he has grudgingly patched up with after having opened a front against.
Moreover, it is also being speculated that Chirag Paswan has indirectly tried to give a message to the BJP leadership that he was not happy with its hobnobbing with his uncle Pashupati Kumar Paras who had split his late father's Lok Janshakti Party and with whom he has a running feud.
Sources in Paswan's party, however, rejected such speculations stressing that "barely a meeting or two" between Paras and top BJP leaders did not imply that the saffron party was trying to humour the disgruntled leader who had resigned from the Union cabinet in protest against his nephew getting weightage in the NDA.
The sources, however, admitted there were issues with the BJP in Jharkhand where assembly polls are due in a few months and past experience, of an alliance, was not satisfactory.
The party was mulling the prospects of going it alone, or a friendly fight, which would help the LJP(R) to expand its base in the tribal state and would agree to contest as part of NDA "only if we get seats of our choice, not a mere token share", a source said.
