The Rashtriya Lok Dal leadership may drive a hard bargain with the Bharatiya Janata Party on its claim on three UP assembly seats where by-elections are due to be held soon.
This may put the BJP, which is a big partner in the National Democratic Alliance, in an uncomfortable position.
After the conclusion of parliamentary elections this year, 10 UP assembly seats have fallen vacant as the MLAs who represented them have been elected to the Lok Sabha.
Sources in the RLD said the party leadership was eyeing assembly seats – Khair, Meerapur and Ghaziabad – to contest in the bypolls. They said these seats were Jat dominated and the RLD leadership was sure of winning them.
“If the RLD wins these seats, its strength would reach 11 in the UP assembly and it would become a powerful alliance partner. In that case the RLD would, to some extent, have the power to play,” the party insiders said.
They said if the RLD leadership succeeded in persuading the BJP to let it contest these three assembly seats in the bypolls, it would be a great diplomatic win for the RLD.
The RLD leaders argued that the party had an edge on these seats it was staking its claim saying as the Meerapur assembly seat fell vacant after party MLA Chandan Chauhan was elected to Lok Sabha from Bijnor.
They said RLD had a good sway over Jats and Gujjars who had dominance in view of their numerical strength.
“Besides, due to socio economic factors, these communities have a command over voters of other castes and cults,” the RLD leaders claimed.
The other assembly seat on which the RLD is staking a claim is Khair. It is a reserved seat in Aligarh and was won by BJP’s Anup Valmiki who has been elected to the Lok Sabha from Hathras.
It may be known that RLD’s Bhagwati Prasad had contested from Khair in the 2022 assembly elections when RLD had an alliance with Samajwadi Party. Bhagwati Prasad, however, had lost to Anup Valmiki.
Political analysts said the RLD sought to take help from the BJP to broaden its bases and popularity among the Dalits in the west UP.
Sources said the RLD was not behind in hard bargaining for seats whosoever was its alliance partner.
“It was very calculative when it cobbled an alliance with the SP in 2022 assembly elections and fell apart when the SP showed adamancy on sharing some of the seats,” the political analysts said.
RLD also plans to contest from Ghaziabad assembly seat which fell vacant after BJP MLA Atul Garg was elected to Lok Sabha. In 2022, the seat was contested by RLD-backed SP candidate Vishal Verma.
RLD national secretary Anupam Mishra said party chief Jayant Chaudhary was holding talks with the BJP leadership and soon a decision would be taken.
“We hope to get these three seats in our kitty. If RLD is strengthened the NDA will also be strengthened. We have a strong base in these constituencies and our candidates were in the second position in the 2017 UP assembly election,” he said.
Mishra said the RLD’s popularity was soaring high in west UP under the leadership of Jayant Chaudhary.
