Ahead of the Uttar Pradesh leg of the Congress’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has reached out to Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Chaudhary Jayant Singh with an offer that he will find difficult to refuse. For now, according to party sources, Mr. Singh is weighing his options. For the BJP, the RLD used to be a ‘parivarvadi (dynastic)’ party but to neutralise the Jat-Muslim vote bank in western U.P. and checkmate the Samajwadi Party (SP), the principal Opposition in the State, it needs the grandson of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh by its side.
No wonder, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, party leader Shivpal Yadav, and Mainpuri MP Dimple Yadav on Wednesday invoked Mr. Singh and his family’s secular credentials and showed faith in his political sagacity to protect the interests of farmers and workers.
Poor track record
The BJP’s track record in Saharanpur and Moradabad divisions and pockets of Meerut, Aligarh, and Agra of western U.P., which constitute at least 18 Lok Sabha seats, has not been convincing. It pushed Muzaffarnagar MP Sanjeev Balyan to the Union Cabinet and made Bhupendra Chaudhary, who hails from Moradabad, the State party president but could not knock off Mr. Singh as the foremost leader of farmers in the region.
According to sources, this time the BJP is playing on the discontent among the RLD’s Jat supporters, who are feeling cheated by the SP’s unilateral decision to have its candidates contest on the RLD’s symbol on three out of the seven seats it was allocated on January 19. This includes Muzaffarnagar, a prestige seat for the party. Things came to a brink when the SP pushed the party to cede the Fatehpur Sikri seat for the Congress. “We are behind the Chaudhary Charan Singh family, but we can’t be taken for granted by the SP,” said Vikas Pradhan, a staunch follower of Mr. Singh from Baghpat.
Mr. Singh, he said, allowed the SP to field its dozen candidates on the hand pump symbol in the Assembly poll. “Not anymore. We are the ones who weathered the government machinery during the farmer protests and wrestlers’ agitation,” he said, stressing the oft-repeated history of trust deficit between the late RLD and the SP patriarchs: Ajit Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Ideological fig leaf
The BJP’s new-found love for the champion of social justice has given a section of Jats, who don’t want the community’s vote to be divided between the BJP and the RLD, an ideological fig leaf to return to the NDA. “If Karpoori Thakur could get the Bharat Ratna, why not Chaudhary Charan Singh, who was his mentor?” said senior RLD leader Ajay Tomar.
Keeping in mind Mr. Singh’s reservations on how the present BJP leadership treated its alliance partners, this time, the party is offering Mr. Singh long-term residency in the NDA. Apart from promises of a berth in the next Union and the present State Cabinets, the BJP, sources say, is giving hints of Jat reservation in Central government jobs, something the SP that cares for Yadav interests has been against, and a possible Harit Pradesh, again a no-go area for the SP, where a Jat could be the CM.
“In the BJP’s bid to secure 400 seats, Jayant could play a role,” said Sohan Veer Singh, former BJP MP from Muzaffarnagar. “We are ready to give the RLD four seats: Baghpat, Kairana, Mathura, and Amroha. With us, they can easily win all four. With Akhilesh, they can only give us a good fight,” he said.
Mr. Sohan Veer said there can’t be a compromise on the Muzaffarnagar seat, where RLD founder Ajit Singh worked to build bridges between Jats and Muslims after the riots of 2013, and lost the 2019 election to Mr. Balyan by a small margin. While the BJP sources deny that RLD has staked a claim to it, sources in the RLD say there can’t be any compromise on the seat.
“When we are not ready to cede it to the SP, how can we let it go to the BJP?” said Mr. Tomar. In the five Assembly seats of Muzaffarnagar, the SP and the RLD hold two each, while the BJP has one.
It is this bigger ideological dissonance between the RLD and the BJP that gives non-Jat leaders of the RLD hope that Mr. Singh would hold on to his anti-BJP stance despite fissures in the alliance with the SP. Recalling the ‘Sadbhavna Yatra’ that Mr. Singh took out in villages of western U.P., national general secretary Mairajuddin Ahmed said Muslims and farmers of the region were looking to the RLD chief to make the right choice. “If he switches sides, there won’t be anybody left to raise their issues,” he said.
“Even those Jats who are feeling suffocated in the BJP feel that if Mr. Singh switches allegiance, Jat farmers would become toothless,” said a khap leader seeking anonymity.
Insiders in both parties say by February 12, the birth anniversary of Ajit Singh, it will be clear if an alliance has been forged.