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UP polls: It’s make or break for RLD’s Jayant Chaudhary
The Uttar Pradesh assembly election 2022 is believed to have presented a ‘make or break’ situation for Jayant Chaudhary, who took over the RLD’s reigns after the demise of his father and the party’s founder Ajit Singh on May 6, 2021.
LUCKNOW: As voting in western Uttar Pradesh will conclude with the second phase polls on February 14, the question being asked is whether the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), under the new leadership of Jayant Chaudhary, will be able to reclaim the political ground it ceded largely to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
Even though the voting for the remaining six phases of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections is yet to take place with the last phase voting being on March 7, for the RLD, the battle is almost over as 29 of the 33 seats it is contesting in alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) went to polls in the first phase on February 10 and the elections to the remaining four seats are underway in the second phase on Monday.
The year 2022 is believed to have presented a make or break situation for Jayant Chaudhary (43), who took over the RLD’s reigns after the demise of his octogenarian father and party founder Ajit Singh due to Covid-19 infection on May 6, 2021.
He faces a tough challenge to carry forward the legacy left behind by his grandfather and ex-prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh as well as his father, and to resurrect the party that went into oblivion since 2014 LS polls that were held amid the Modi wave and after the infamous 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots between Jats and Muslims.
This is the first election after the death of Ajit Singh, and Jayant has the onus of proving himself by bringing the party back into reckoning by winning as many seats as possible and this is why he is leaving no stone unturned as he sees 2022 as the right opportunity.
RLD’s electoral history
The RLD’s electoral history shows that its best ever performance in terms of number of seats won in the UP assembly elections was recorded in 2002 when it captured 14 of the 38 seats the party contested in alliance with the BJP.
Its vote share in the seats contested was also the highest at 26.82% in 2002 though the vote share against the total valid votes polled was only 2.48%, which was lower than the vote share of 3.70% the party got in 2007 elections when the party won 10 of the 254 seats on its own. The party’s vote share in the seats contested in 2007 was 5.76%.
In alliance with the Congress in 2012 assembly polls, the RLD won 9 of the 46 seats it fought, getting 20.5% of the vote share in the seats contested and 2.33% against the total valid votes cast in the state. The party went solo in 2017 assembly polls and could manage to win only one seat, that is, Chaprauli in Baghpat but the lone MLA Sahendra Singh Ramala later joined the BJP in 2018.
The RLD’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections in UP was recorded to be the best in 2009 when it won five seats in alliance with the BJP. The five seats included Baghpat and Mathura won by Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhary, respectively. Earlier in 2004 LS polls, the RLD contested in alliance with the SP and won three seats.
In 2014, the RLD had alliance with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) but drew a blank on all the eight seats it fought. Even Ajit Singh, who held the seat for six terms, and his son, who then represented Mathura parliament constituency, lost to BJP candidates Satya Pal Singh and Hema Malini, respectively.
In 2019 LS polls again, the party had to face a humiliating defeat. Despite joining the grand alliance formed by the SP and the BSP, the RLD lost all the three seats it contested. Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhary were two of the three losers.
RLD-SP challenge
This time, however, the RLD-SP alliance appears to have posed a tough challenge to the BJP that, in 2017, won 53 of the 58 seats spreading across 11 districts that went to polls in western UP on Thursday.
Not only does Jayant enjoy sympathy of many Jats due to loss of his father less than a year ago, but his supporters also believe that renewed Jat-Muslim bonhomie to a great extent and the farmer agitation that continued in the region for over a year made the electorate climate more favourable to the RLD.
Jayant was seen on many occasions taking the BJP head on in public meetings that drew good crowds. Also, through tweets he was prompt to build a narrative or a counter-narrative.
“The way the top BJP leaders tried to woo Jayant, and failed to break the RLD-SP alliance, is evident from the fact that the BJP was scared of our leader’s popularity,” RLD spokesman Anil Dubey said. “The RLD is going to re-emerge as a force to reckon with after the elections,” he claimed.
Observers, however, feel it would have been even easier for Jayant to re-establish himself and his party had he been able to work out electoral alliance with the BJP.
“It is the SP and not the RLD that is likely to benefit from the alliance in the western UP,” said Rajendra Pandey, professor in the department of political science in Chaudhary Singh University, Meerut.
“This is because a section of voters, that otherwise supported the RLD, did not like the party entering into alliance with the SP because of the Muzaffarnagar riots that took place during its regime and also because of the SP’s negative image with regard to law and order that is a big issue in the region,” he explained.
Jayant, he said, also made some mistakes in distribution of tickets inviting the wrath of many Jats in some constituencies like Baghpat and Siwal Khas where the party fielded Muslim candidates.
“It appears that his over-reliance on possible electoral benefits from the farmer agitation and perceived Jat-Muslim reunion made him commit some blunders in choosing the poll partner and selecting the candidates,” said Lalit Sharma, a Meerut resident and spokesman for UP Gram Pradhan Mahasangh.
Both Pandey and Sharma agree that the BJP might have a compromised performance in western UP this time for the benefit of the RLD-SP alliance.
