Chirag Paswan appointed LJP’s poll in-charge for UP

Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan on Sunday appointed party leader and son Chirag Paswan as the election in-charge for the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls and pitched him as a youth icon against state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi.

The Union minister claimed that Gandhi and Yadav were no longer youth politicians and Chirag was an emerging face which the youth in the country could trust. Chirag, on the occasion, said the country’s youth preferred Prime Minister Narendra Modi over any other leader during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections because the PM’s thinking was like of a “mature youth”.

He said a leader is judged on the basis of his thinking and not by his age and termed Modi a “genuine youth” of the country who encouraged lakhs of people to rise on their feet by introducing schemes like Standup India, Startup India and Skill India among others.

The MP said those leaders who claim to be youth icons should first have in them the “mature thinking” which the youth of this country has already found in Modi.

Taking a dig at Gandhi, he said he was unable to understand what the Congress leader thinks and does as when he was required to speak on the JNU incident in Parliament, he was silent whereas he raised a hue and cry over the issue at the university and outside.