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Updated: Dec 04, 2018 07:11 IST

The young man, all of 22 years old, had just returned to his village, Shaharbanni in Khagadia district, after clearing the civil service examination in 1968 to attend family celebrations. He was selected for the Bihar police. At village roundabout he found a Dalit man, limbs tied, facing the local panchayat in front of a hundred people.

The charge: the man hadn’t returned Rs 150 he owed to his master for medical treatment. A young “police officer in waiting”, Ram Vilas Paswan got the man released. He tore the accounts book that the complainant had brought along as evidence, and dispersed the crowd.

The young man became a local hero. Not long after, his community convinced him to contest the elections and gave him a ticket from the Samyukt Socialist Party for a by-election from Aloli in 1969. This was his first election and he defeated a Congress heavyweight with a margin of 700-odd votes.

That’s how the life of Ram Vilas Paswan, the Lok Janshakti Party chief who has completed 50 years in legislative politics, changed.

“My father was upset at the thought of me leaving police service,” Paswan chuckles.

“I consulted a colleague from the Socialist Party who told me ‘If you want to be government then become an MLA. If you want to be servant then join the police force’. I decided to be the government,” the union minister remembers.

The 72-year-old socialist veteran believes he has enough “politics” still left in him.

“There is no end to politics for a politician,” says Paswan. “Any alliance government has its bounds and limitations, which stops one from speaking freely... But we do speak when there is an occasion.”

Paswan was among the first, for instance, to demand the government pass an ordinance to restore the original provisions of the SC/ST Atrocities Act, which were diluted by a Supreme Court order.

From crossing two rivers to get to his village school, fighting with authorities to get proper facilities at the Prince of Wales higher secondary school hostel in Khagaria, or wearing sleepers for the first time in class 9, life hasn’t been easy for this Bihar politician.

He is a nine- term MP who has been part of several governments. Chess is his favourite game, he says, and it’s hard to ignore the fact that he has always made the right moves.

He has been a founding pillar of third front governments, and a champion of social justice, he reminds this paper.

“Mulayam Singh Yadav and I are the only two active leaders who are from real socialist background. Others such Sharad Yadav, Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad came much later. ” Paswan says he recently suggested that his filmstar-turned-parliamentarian son, Chirag Paswan, take over the reins of the LJP and relive him. “But he wants me to continue,” Paswan says.

Paswan represents Hajipur, a seat next to state capital Patna, in Lok Sabha and there is speculation that he might not contest the next parliamentary election and become a member of the Rajya Sabha instead.