RLD, BJP maintain suspense amid buzz, denials and studied silence

LUCKNOW/ MEERUT: Despite denials through Wednesday, the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) kept the suspense alive about the likelihood of the party finalising a pre-poll alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), days before Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra enters Uttar Pradesh on February 16.

RLD is a key player of INDIA bloc in UP but a buzz since Tuesday, though not for the first time, has gathered steam about RLD set to dump the Samajwadi Party. As per the buzz, fuelled further by ambiguous statements of BJP leaders and studied silence of RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary, a Jat (OBC), the BJP has reportedly offered 4 Lok Sabha seats and two ministerial portfolios.

Both deputy chief ministers Keshav Prasad Maurya and Brajesh Pathak as well as UP BJP chief Bhupendra Chaudhary, a Jat leader from west UP, smiled in response to queries on the fate of the SP-RLD alliance.

“You will get to know when that happens,” said Maurya while Pathak added, “Everyone is getting drawn to BJP and PM Modi anyway.”

When approached, Bhupendra Chaudhary came up with a standard response: “BJP respects all and all are welcome. As for alliance, these decisions will be made by top leadership.”

Efforts to contact Jayant Chaudhary didn’t materialise and this silence of the RLD top leader has kept the suspense on over the BJP’s move.

“Jayant ji is a very sorted, much educated leader. He understands politics well. I don’t think he will weaken the fight for the farmers and the efforts to make UP prosperous,” Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said in Lucknow.

Meanwhile, Akhilesh’s wife and Mainpuri Lok Sabha MP Dimple Yadav said in Delhi, “I don’t think that Jayant ji, who is also a Rajya Sabha MP, will take any such decision that would harm the farmers.”

In May 2022, Akhilesh helped Jayant become a Rajya Sabha MP despite RLD lacking numbers to send its chief to the upper house. The gesture by Akhilesh was understood as a signal of the rapport between the two leaders. In the middle of the 2022 UP polls too Jayant had resisted offers by BJP to get him to join the NDA.

On his part, RLD’s organisational general secretary, Trilok Tyagi dismissed the buzz of a BJP-RLD pact while admitting that the party had been approached by BJP.

“It’s true that BJP had approached us sometime back, but the fact is that our alliance with SP is strong,” Tyagi said adding that the BJP-fuelled buzz was indicative of the ruling party’s admission that its tally would reduce now.

However, while sounding confident about the fate of the opposition alliance, even RLD leaders admitted that all was not well.

“We had demanded eight seats from SP but got seven,” Tyagi admitted. RLD’s national secretary, Rajkumar Sangwan, said: “The Samajwadi Party wants to field its candidates on the RLD symbol from Kairana, Muzaffarnagar and Bijnor seats, but it does not mean that the RLD is walking away from the alliance. We believe that the SP leadership will adopt a flexible attitude and all issues between the two parties will be resolved,” Sangwan said.

SP or the RLD haven’t been on the best of terms with the Congress, the main party of the opposition alliance. While SP had made its displeasure with local Congress leadership’s approach evident during seat sharing in Madhya Pradesh polls an eventually went solo, the RLD too had expressed unhappiness over Congress sparing a single seat for the party in Rajasthan polls.

Despite some influence in west UP, the RLD is mostly a minor player in Lok Sabha polls, with its highest vote share of 4.5 percent recorded in 2004 Lok Sabha polls. In 2019 LS polls RLD’s vote share was 1.7 per cent though together with SP, the combined vote share of the two parties stood at 19.8 per cent.