Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party breaks NDA ties, says party faced injustice due to Dalit identity

New Delhi: Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party is no longer part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), party chief and former union minister Pashupati Kumar Paras announced on Monday.

Making the announcement, Paras said his party faced injustice because it was a Dalit party, and that his party found no mention by the BJP and JDU state chiefs in Bihar at NDA meetings. Paras said, “I have been with the NDA since 2014. Today I announce that henceforth my party shall have no links with the NDA”

Speaking about his party’s political future, Pashupati Paras said, “If Mahagathbandhan gives us proper respect at the right time, we will definitely think of politics in the future.” Paras has held several meetings with RJD president Lalu Prasad Yadav this year.

Paras announced his party’s split with the NDA on Monday at a function organised on the occasion of BR Ambedkar’s birth anniversary.

At the RLJP function, Paras also charged at Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and said, “In Nitish Kumar’s 20-year-long rule, the education system has been ruined in the state, no new industries have been set up, and rampant corruption affects the implementation of all welfare schemes,”, as reported by news agency PTI.

Reacting to the development, Union minister Jitan Ram Manjhi said “there will be no adverse impact on the NDA”.

RLJP was formed in 2021 after the split in the Lok Janshakti Party, founded by his late brother Ram Vilas Paswan.

Paras gave up his cabinet berth last year ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, when his nephew’s Rashtriya Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) got five seats to contest as an NDA constituent.

Last year, Paras was also asked to vacate the bungalow provided by the Bihar Government from where he ran his party and allotted it to Chirag Paswan, news agency PTI reports.