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Lok Janshakti Party MP Pashupati Kumar Paras, who recently staged a political coup and deposed nephew Chirag Paswan as the party chief, was on Thursday declared elected, unopposed, the new national president of the outfit.
Party sources said no other contender filed nomination papers till 3 pm and a formal announcement with regard to the election of the Hajipur MP will be made in the evening.
The sources added that the former state minister was also scheduled to make a courtesy call on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar whom supporters of Chirag have been accusing of having engineered the split, which has left the son of LJP founding president late Ram Vilas Paswan cornered.
It was not known whether any decision was taken about Chirag, whom Paras, late Paswan’s youngest brother, had replaced as the party’s leader in Lok Sabha earlier this week, armed with the support of four remaining LJP MPs.
A couple of days ago, a national executive meeting of the party was held in Delhi where former MP Suraj Bhan Singh was made the working president and Chirag was removed from the post, though the latter has indicated he was bracing for a legal battle over the move.
Incidentally, party MP Prince Raj, whose late father Ram Chandra Paswan was a prominent LJP leader and the founding president’s younger brother, was conspicuous by his absence at the meeting held at Suraj Bhan Singh’s residence here.
The 31-year-old first-term MP is in the soup over allegations of sexual harassment by a former party functionary.
