Ram Vilas Paswan’s return signals nation’s mood
Mr Ram Vilas Paswan's return to the National Democratic Alliance after almost a decade of leaving has ramifications that go beyond electoral numbers and Bihar. It has punctured the propaganda that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance is an untouchable for the ‘secularists'. The lok Janshakti Party supremo had quit the coalition in the wake of the violence that had erupted in Gujarat in 2002 and had, like several other anti-Narendra Modi voices, held the State Government responsible for the incident. But now, after the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team has given Mr Modi a clean chit, and after it has become amply clear that the hate-Modi campaign has been motivated more by cheap politics than facts on the ground, Mr Paswan's party has rightly taken the position that it would be inappropriate to continue holding the Gujarat Chief Minister and now the BJP's prime ministerial candidate responsible for that violence. Given that Mr Modi's personal culpability remains not just non-established but also rejected through the apex court-appointed probe agency, there was no cause for Mr Paswan to remain outside the NDA fold. After all, he had been part of the coalition during Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee's tenure as Prime Minister, shared an excellent rapport with leaders of the BJP, and had even served as a Union Minister. Of course, his return has also to do with the shabby treatment he has received at the hands of the Rashtriya Janata Dal — with whom he had an alliance in the 2009 election — and the Congress, on the issue of seat-sharing. As he has observed, neither of the two parties was willing to deal with him with the respect and consideration that he deserved. This humiliation, along with the fact that Mr Modi is legally clear of the 2002 taint, propelled his return to the NDA. Mr Paswan's re-entry has also put paid to the hopes the BJP's rivals have been nurturing that the NDA will not be able to grow substantially beyond what it is today. Not only has the lJP joined the coalition but also that many more are expected to join the alliance from across the country in the weeks to come. There is poetic justice, though, in the fact that the first major party to join the NDA in the run-up to this lok Sabha election should be from Bihar. It was another party from this State (the Janata Dal-United) which had walked out of the alliance against the impending nomination of Mr Modi as the BJP's candidate for prime ministership and triggered talk that the BJP-led combine was on the verge of decimation. The discourse should now shift to development politics and away from the spurious bogey of communalism that the BJP's rivals have been flaunting ad nauseam, though we can expect them to continue flogging the dead horse.
Electorally speaking, Mr Paswan's return to the NDA is good for both his party and the BJP. The lJP will get to contest seven lok Sabha seats from Bihar, have the backing of the formidable Sangh Parivar cadre, and cash in on both the strong anti-Congress and anti-Nitish Kumar sentiments in the State — the latter having become especially pronounced after the State's Chief Minister decided to walk out of the NDA against the wishes of a large section of the people of Bihar. The BJP, in return, will benefit from the support of the Maha Dalits that form a chunk of Mr Paswan's vote-bank. The social engineering that will consequently result could herald serious trouble for lalu Prasad's RJD as well as the JD(U). The Congress, meanwhile, is irrelevant on its own.