INDIA bloc will disintegrate before 2024 Lok Sabha polls: Chirag Paswan

Ballia (UP): Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) president Chirag Paswan on Thursday called the opposition INDIA bloc "Bhanumati ka Kunba" and claimed that it will disintegrate before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Paswan also said that the INDIA alliance's constituent parties are "thirsty for each other's blood".

He was talking to reporters here on the sidelines of a Dalit conference organised by his party.

"The INDIA bloc is like 'Bhanumati ka Kunba' (people with different ideologies coming together) which will collapse before the parliamentary polls in 2024. Similar efforts would have been seen even before the 2019 elections.

"When more than a dozen contenders for the post of prime minister are on one platform, then how can that alliance survive? Personal ambitions dominate such a coalition," the Jamui MP said.

On the women's reservation bill recently passed by the Parliament, he expressed confidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will fulfil various demands, including inclusion of other backward classes in the Nari Shakti Vandan Bill.

On the controversy over RJD MP Manoj Jha reciting an "anti-Thakur" poem in the Rajya Sabha last week, Paswan said that Jha has adopted the policy of "divide and rule".

"Manoj Jha serves his political interests only by creating division in the society. He has made indecent comments against people belonging to a particular caste. This is not the first time. This is the thinking of the party he belongs to," he said.

Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) formed in 2021 is a faction of former Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (LJP). The faction has Chirag Paswan, son of Ram Vilas Paswan, as the only member in Parliament.

The rest five MPs of LJP are in the LJP (National) headed by Union minister and Hajipur MP Pashupati Kumar Paras, who is Chirag Paswan's uncle.

Both the groupings are in the NDA.