Only days ago, Chirag Paswan announced that the Lok Janshakti Party would contest the Bihar Assembly polls all by itself. Notwithstanding the strings attached to the BJP in Delhi, many an eyebrow turned tangential. The BJP’s doing to punish Nitish for his past dalliances, agreed most. After all, why else would a humble chirag, splutter at a full-blown political persona as chief minister and JDU boss Nitish Kumar and want to contest 143 seats given its current Vidhan Sabha tally of 2 out of 243? And that is how things would have remained had tragedy not struck the LJP.
The S word
With the death of Ram Vilas Paswan there is talk of a sympathy vote for the LJP. And sympathy in politics can be a potent thing. Sometimes it can preclude processes and elections. That happened in 1984, after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. In 1991, it was the sympathy vote following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi that averted the hung Parliament predicted by pundits, helped Congress fare better in the post-assassination poll phases, and win 244 seats and form government. And yet two decades later, when the Congress fell out with the late YSR’s son, Jagan Reddy, it seemed to have discounted the sympathy cards stashed in the favour of the good son. For a good while, Jagan Reddy rode all kinds of sympathies big and misplaced. First, there was his father’s tragic death, then his arrest following the disproportionate assets case and 16-month jail time. He lost the 2014 elections and was knifed while boarding a flight in 2018 before going on to achieve a clean sweep in 2019 and assume chief ministership of Andhra Pradesh.
Yours sympathetically
In the South, the DMK won the Madras Legislative Assembly elections of 1967 after MGR was shot in the ear by a co-actor and nearly lost his voice and hearing. The DMK alone won 137 seats; the Congress came second with 51 seats. But sympathy can be partisan. When MGR died in 1987, his wife succeeded him as the AIADMK chief minister, but remained in power only for a few days. Instead, people and political heavyweights transferred their affections and sympathy to his political heir, Jayalalithaa. In 1991, the AIADMK under Jayalalithaa fought the Assembly elections in alliance with the Congress and when Rajiv Gandhi died, the sympathy propelled the alliance into victory and Jayalalithaa into the hot seat. Last week, close on the heels of the news of Paswan Sr’s death, a letter from his son to BJP national president J.P. Nadda was leaked. The missive, from reports, appears to be a listicle of Nitish’s misdemeanors against the just departed. All very well, except you might ask --- where is the voter in all of this? Where are the policies and plans and development issues waiting to be addressed? You could always ask you know, and you would have the sympathies.
