Chirag Paswan’s fate hangs in the balance after poll drubbing in Bihar

Patna, Nov 11: The road ahead for Chirag Paswan appears to be tough after a poor showing in the Bihar assembly elections.

His party, the LJP won just one seat. With such a poor performance, many have now questioned his logic of going solo in the elections. This has in fact the LJP's worst performance since it made its foray in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

This time, the party's candidate Raj Kumar Singh from the Mathani constituency won the elections, but the party could not win the two seats it had represented in the previous assembly elections.

It is a fact that the LJP did hurt the NDA's vote share and this resulted in the JD(U) underperforming. However, Paswan's plan of playing kingmaker has now gone down the drain. It is now entirely up to the top bosses of the BJP whether it wants to retain the LJP in the NDA. Paswan would have to do a lot of convincing to remain in the NDA at the Centre and will also prove that he can be a reliable partner.

In the 2010 and 2015 elections, the LJP had won three and two seats respectively. The party would have hoped for a better performance this year. The best performance by the LJP was in the 2005 elections when it won 29 seats and stopped the RJD from returning to power.