Jayant in Union cabinet, RLD returns to ‘power’ after 10 years

The Chaudhary family has returned to the Union government after a gap of 10 years, with the induction of RLD chairman Jayant Chaudhary as minister of state in the NDA government, on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the Jat Mahasabha’s state president Rohit Jakhar has expressed dismay that no one from the Jat community was made a cabinet minister.

Congratulating Jayant on becoming Union minister of state (independent charge), Jakhar hoped that pending demands of the Jat community, farmers, youth, deprived and unemployed youth will be on his priority.

“The self-respecting Jat community has had 4-5 cabinet ministers in the Union cabinet. After 2019, not even a single Jat took oath as a cabinet minister. Modi ji has once again ignored the Jat community,” said Jakhar.

Former chief of RLD, late Ajit Singh, served as a cabinet minister in Congress-led UPA government until it was in power till 2014.

Singh lost in Lok Sabha election of 2014 and 2019 from Bagpat and Muzaffarnagar seats, respectively. Jayant Chaudhary was also defeated in Mathura (2014) and Bagpat (2019) in the same elections.

Only his party candidate, Sahendra Ramala, won the Chhaprauli seat in the 2017 Assembly election, and a year later, he too joined the BJP. Therefore, the party has no representation in any house.

Jayant then made an alliance with Samajwadi Party and Congress and eight candidates of his party became MLAs. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha with Samajwadi Party support.

Jayant Chaudhary, however, shifted to the NDA after BJP conferred the Bharat Ratna on his grandfather and former prime minister late Ch Charan Singh, and his tweet “Dil Jeet Liya” became popular.

For shifting his loyalty to NDA, Jayant was rewarded with a berth of cabinet minister for his MLA Anil Kumar in UP, and another leader, Yogesh Nahovar, was elected member in the Legislative Council.

A party which had no representation in any house till two and half years ago, now has representation in the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly and ministers in state and union governments.

The RLD has been strengthened in the past two years, but political experts say that the party has ignored many ideological issues to enjoy political power.

Jamshed Zaidi, a political expert, said that RLD claims to be a party of farmers and labourers and BJP has an anti-farmer image. Jayant himself conducted dozens of rallies against BJP’s three controversial farm bills and widely criticised it during the farmers’ movement. It will be interesting to see how he works on these issues after joining a BJP-led government.