Opinion | BJP’s Dalliance with Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD is About A Lot More Than Just Electoral Gain

There’s talk that the INDIA bloc is about to be jolted another time. After Nitish Kumar, in Uttar Pradesh, Rashtriya Lok Dal’s (RLD) chief Jayant Chaudhary might be planning to jump ship. Chaudhary is a “dear friend” of INDIA bloc chieftains Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi. In fact, even before the ink dries, it’s possible that “talk” would have fructified into fact.

Jayant Chaudhary will feel compelled to accept the BJP’s offer conceding four seats (Kairana, Baghpat, Mathura, and Amroha) in western UP where the young turk has influence over Jat farmers. The RLD leader has been cut up with the INDIA bloc because Akhilesh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP) wanted its candidates to contest elections from Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, and Bijnor Lok Sabha seats on the RLD symbol.

The RLD is naturally proprietorial about its turf because it dominates in these seats in western Uttar Pradesh. In the 2022 assembly polls, the RLD had partnered with the SP. It contested on 33 seats here and won nine. The RLD was buoyed by farmer goodwill. Jayant Chaudhary had campaigned hard with local Jat farmers to oppose the NDA’s three farm laws and claimed credit for getting the Modi administration to roll them back.

Given this background, getting RLD to switch will help the BJP in two ways. First, the BJP will be in a strong position to win all 14 Lok Sabha seats in the Meerut, Moradabad and Saharanpur divisions as it has done in 2014. Readers will recall that in 2019, the BJP had only won half of these seats as the RLD-SP-BSP alliance had pushed the BJP onto the back foot.

Second, luring the RLD back into the NDA will perhaps, most importantly, give the BJP a conduit to the Jat farmer constituency in western UP and eastern Rajasthan.

The BJP is sure to project the RLD’s return as confirmation that the Opposition’s agitation against the three farm laws was more about opposing Modi than an ideological lament against the laws themselves. What the farmers think matters to the BJP because the NDA, committed as it is to doubling Kisan incomes, may like to revisit the three farm laws if it returns with a comfortable majority.

Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.