Lok Janshakti Party leader Pashupati Kumar Paras on Wednesday challenged Chirag Paswan's contention that the election of the former as the head of the parliamentary party was invalid since such a decision could be taken "only by the national president or the chairman of the parliamentary board".
On his first visit to Bihar since the dramatic turn of events that saw him leading the rebellion by all but one of six LJP MPs, Paras also asserted that Chirag had been "divested of" the post of national president on the previous day "in keeping with the party constitution".
"The party constitution stipulates that one person can hold only one post. Chirag, however, was the national president, the chairman of the parliamentary board and the leader in the House, all rolled into one. We have corrected that", he said.
He also said that while Suraj Bhan Singh, a former MP, has been made the working president and a full-time national chief of the LJP will be elected here on Thursday.
Chirag Paswan, son of LJP founding president Ram Vilas Paswan, who has been cornered in the very party he had been heading for nearly a year, had at a press conference in Delhi earlier in the day raised questions over the Lok Sabha Speaker giving recognition to the rebel faction which has chosen Paras as its leader.
Earlier, on arrival at the Patna airport, Paras was welcomed by a large number of supporters.
From airport he went straight to Wheeler road office of the LJP, exhibiting his control over the state party headquarter where loyalists of Chirag had Tuesday staged protest and even blackened the posters and banners of Paras and four other MPs siding with him.