New Delhi: From getting his brothers elected as lawmakers to shepherding his nephew and son into politics, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) founder Ram Vilas Paswan was known for keeping his family members together. That chapter is long over after his death in October 2020.
What started as a battle over Paswan’s legacy leading to a vertical split in the LJP in 2021 has now seen a new low: Rajkumari Devi, Paswan’s first wife, has accused Paras, his wife, and Ramchandra Paswan’s wife of locking her out of a room at their ancestral house.
Paras is the younger brother of late Ram Vilas Paswan, while Ramchandra, the other, died in 2019.
“On the evening of 29 March, both my sisters-in-law—Shobha and Sunaina Devi—arrived at my house with their bodyguard and two drivers. On 30 March, at around 3 p.m., both sisters-in-law suddenly entered my room. They threw out my clothes, bedding and jewelry in the bedroom and bathroom,” Rajkumari’s police complaint, originally in Hindi, reads.
After learning about the episode, Union Minister and LJP (Ram Vilas) chief Chirag Paswan rushed two persons, including his nephew Prince Paswan.
Prince, the grandson of Rajkumari, told ThePrint repeated her charges which were mentioned in the police complaint.
“They have constructed a house near nani’s (maternal grandmother) house. This is not the first time they have come to disturb and abuse nani, they have done in the past, too. Since the (Bihar) elections are coming, they might be doing this to disturb Chirag ji,” he told ThePrint. “Now, Chirag ji has been informed. He will arrive in a day or two, and decide what has to be done for nani’s safety.”
The “disputed” property is a four-room house at Shaharbanni village in Bihar’s Khagaria district. Though she has two daughters, Rajkumari Devi lives mostly on her own and has stayed away from the public. She was last seen at a public event in Patna five years ago when she cried inconsolably and fainted after paying tribute to her late husband, Ram Vilas Paswan.
“The house has four rooms and she was living in one of the rooms where the wives of Paras, and Ramchandra came with a guard and threw away her belongings,” LJP (RV) spokesperson R. Vineet told ThePrint.
On his part, Paras has refuted the allegation of creating a ruckus and of his wife beating Rajkumari Devi. The former Union minister, however, admitted that there was a dispute over the property. “Property division is an issue. But the entire episode has been made public for political mileage,” he said. “There was no assault on Rajkumari Devi.”
The two factions of the LJP, one led by Paras and Chirag, are now at each other’s throats over the latest family dispute.
“Paras is touring the state and wants to become the leader of Dalits in the state. …this behaviour with ‘bhabhi (sister-in-law, read Rajkumari)’ is disgraceful and condemnable,” LJP (RVP) general secretary Sanjay Paswan told ThePrint.
“The charges are politically motivated and condemnable, only to gain political mileage. Nobody expects such behaviour from Chirag Paswan,” Shravan Agrawal, the spokesperson of the LJP Paras faction, countered.
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Ram Vilas Paswan’s family
While Rajkumari Devi is the first wife of Ram Vilas Paswan, the late Dalit leader had later married Reena Sharma, an air hostess. The senior Paswan has two daughters from his first marriage, and a son, Chirag, and a daughter from his other wife.
Rajkumari’s two daughters Usha and Asha are married to politicians. Similarly, Chirag’s sister Nisha is married to Arun Bharti, a functionary in the Union minister’s party, LJP (Ram Vilas). While Arun Bharti is the MP from Jamui, Chirag represents Hajipur in the Lok Sabha.
Chirag, a minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet, shares good rapport with Rajkumari Devi. Last year, Chirag had orchestrated a stunning comeback by winning all five Lok Sabha seats his party contested in Bihar. That performance had pushed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to dump Paras in favour of Chirag. The uncle-nephew duo has been at loggerheads ever since Paras engineered a split in the party.
“Ram Vilas ji always protected and groomed his brothers to share his legacy without any hitch so that they don’t feel left out. First, he fielded Paras in the 1977 assembly elections. When the younger brother (Ramchandra) showed interest to join politics, he fielded him in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections,” a LJP old-timer said.
Ramchandra was at that time an owner of a brick kiln when he became an MP, the veteran recalled.
“He (Ram Vilas) made Paras the state president of the party and left Bihar at his disposal, right from ticket distribution to managing funds in state. He always called Paras as manager and Ramchandra as his son… Paras used to cook meals for his elder brother,” the LJP functionary said, reminiscing the happy years of the Paswan clan.
Things began to sour, the LJP functionary said, when Paswan picked up his son Chirag to contest the Lok Sabha polls in 2014. “This was despite him ensuring separate positions for Paras and (Ramchandra’s son) Prince Raj in the party.”
Both Paras and Prince Raj have been Lok Sabha MPs in the past. In fact, Paras was a minister in the Modi Cabinet till March last year. At the time of resigning, he had accused the BJP of meting out “injustice” by keeping his outfit away from the Lok Sabha seat-sharing agreement in Bihar.
Rajkumar Devi, according to this LJP veteran, had impressed upon all family members that the Paswan clan should remain united even after a split in the party. “But now, things have changed much, and Paswan ji’s first wife who called for unity in the family, is fighting to live in the ancestral home.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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