President of India, Droupadi Murmu, has accepted the resignation of former Union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras, who resigned from the Union Cabinet on Tuesday, and gave minister of earth sciences Kiren Rijiju the additional charge of the ministry of food processing industries that was held by Paras.
“The President of India, as advised by the Prime Minister, has accepted the resignation of Shri Pashu Pati Kumar Paras from the Union Council of Ministers, with immediate effect, under clause (2) of Article 75 of the Constitution,” said a statement from the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
“Further, as advised by the prime minister, the President has directed that Kiren Rijiju be assigned the charge of the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, in addition to his existing portfolio,” it added.
Paras, the president of the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RLJP), an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), resigned from the Union Cabinet a day after his party was not assigned a single seat in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) seat-sharing deal in Bihar for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Instead, the LJP (Ram Vilas), led by Paras’s nephew Chirag Paswan, will be contesting give seats, including the family’s stronghold of Hajipur.
Chirag Paswan broke away from the Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (RJLP), founded by his father Ram Vilas Paswan, and the NDA and contested the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with his own party, due to his feud with the JD(U), which was also an NDA member.
“Yesterday, the NDA announced the list of 40 candidates for Bihar Lok Sabha [..] Our party had five MPs and I worked with utmost sincerity [..] Injustice has been done with us and our party. Therefore, I resign from the post of Union minister,” Paras said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Paras also called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a big leader and said that he was thankful to him. He expressed his displeasure over the treatment meted out to him and said that he had served the NDA with honesty and loyalty but received injustice. It is likely that Paras will fight the Hajipur seat, as he has repeatedly claimed he will, which may pitch him against Paswan himself.
The BJP will be contesting 17 out of 40 seats in Bihar, while Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal-United (JD-U) will be contesting 16. This is the first time the BJP will be contesting more seats than its primary ally in Bihar. In 2019, the NDA swept Bihar, winning 39 out of the 40 seats. The BJP won all 17 it contested, the JD-U 16, the LJP six.
