With the farmers’ leaders announcing to intensify their agitation in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party and its ally Rashtriya Lok Dal have finalised their plans to campaign in the state, particularly in western UP.
RLD, once a dominant player in the west UP politics, has started working to regain the political space lost to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party. The RLD has already organised ‘bahichara’ rallies in Muzaffarnagar in a bid to restore the social coalition of Jat-Muslim and other OBC communities. This coalition was shattered by the worst-ever communal riots in Muzaffarnagar in September 2013 during the Samajwadi Party regime headed by Akhilesh Yadav. RLD had contested the 2017 UP assembly polls and the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with the SP.
The RLD is eyeing to woo back its once loyal Jat voters, who are little over 10 per cent of the electorate in districts under the Meerut division, along with other castes and communities, including Gurjars, Tyagis, Brahmins and Muslims, besides the Dalits. RLD president and former MP Jayant Chaudhary led bhaichara sammelans to build a rainbow coalition of castes and communities to revive the political fortunes of his party.
Jayant Chaudhary’s grandfather, Chaudhary Charan Singh after deserting the Congress in 1967 had created a social coalition of farmers of different castes and religions. The rise of the political forces following the implementation of the Mandal Commission report in 1990, emergence of BSP and of BJP following the temple movement in 1990, destroyed that rainbow coalition.
The first of the series of bhaichara sammelans was launched in Khatauli Vidhan Sabha constituency in Muzaffarnagar district, the home district of Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait, spearheading the farmers’ agitation at Ghazipur on Delhi-UP border.
The Samyukt Kisan Morcha, an umbrella under which the ongoing farmers’ stir is underway, has announced to hold a kisan mahapanchayat in the same Muzaffarnagar district of west UP on September 5. It has also announced to hold demonstrations across UP and Uttarakhand, including Lucknow.
Samajwadi Party, the senior ally of the RLD, has also resumed tour of the state in the run-up to UP assembly polls in 2022. SP chief Akhilesh Yadav’s tour was scheduled to resume after panchayat elections in April but was deferred due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sources in the SP said that between December 2020 and April this year, Akhilesh Yadav had campaigned in as many as 40 districts. The party said while Yadav would complete the tour of the remaining districts this time around, he may also revisit some districts, including his Lok Sabha constituency Azamgarh, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, and districts in Bundelkhand region. These tours involve meeting the party cadre for discussions on poll preparation, road shows, public meetings, kisan panchayats, press conferences, and short bicycle rides with party workers. He had also been on temple runs, going to Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist places of worship.