JAT PLUS: A CHALLENGE IN THE WEST

After a decade in the wilderness, the Rashtriya Lok Dal and its new chief, Jayant Chaudhary, are back in the reckoning in bastion western UP

- PRASHANT SRIVASTAVA

On January 28 last year, when former Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief and Jat leader, the late Ajit Singh, called farmer leader Rakesh Tikait to extend his support to the agitation against the farm laws, the call went from his son Jayant Chaudhary's phone. The timing was perfect, the agitation which was on the verge of fizzling out, was suddenly buzzing again after Tikait's emotional outburst on national TV. Jayant's decision that the party should support the farmer leader by sending supporters from its western UP bastion to the Ghazipur border in the national capital came as a huge fillip to the cause.

The next day, Jayant himself reached the Ghazipur border to meet Tikait. The move gave a new turn to RLD's politics which had been in a seemingly terminal decline since 2014. The party had drawn a blank in the 2014 and 2019 Lok Sabha polls with both Ajit and Jayant losing in their own fiefdom, Baghpat district. In the 2017 election, the party won just one seat; their Chaprauli MLA Sahender Singh Ramala later joined the BJP. Now, the triumphant farmers' agitation could just be the vehicle that the RLD needs to get the Jats back in its corner and re-establish itself as the community's primary choice in western UP. A big boost has been the party's tie-up with the main opposition, the Samajwadi Party (SP), for the coming assembly election. The SP has agreed to give the RLD 35-40 seats in western UP.