LUCKNOW: In a major jolt to Jayant Chaudhury-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) ahead of the 2027 UP Assembly elections, the party’s UP unit chief Dr Ramashish Rai resigned from his party post and its primary membership here on Friday.
The outgoing leader, in his resignation letter addressed to RLD national president and Union Minister Jayant Chaudhury, cited ideological and ethical reasons for his decision.
Rai expressed his gratitude to Chaudhary for giving him the responsibility of leading the party’s UP unit, saying that he had worked to the best of his ability to strengthen the organisation during his tenure.
He added that he toured various districts of the state extensively, interacted with party workers, and worked continuously towards expanding and strengthening the base of the organisation.
Rai had joined RLD in 2021 and was appointed the party’s state unit chief in 2022. A resident of Deoria, Rai was the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (student wing of BJP) national president between 1997 and 2000. He also got elected to UP legislative council as a BJP nominee during this period. Rai contested UP polls in 1993 from Fazilnagar on a BJP ticket but lost it by a slender margin of 1500 votes. He switched over to the RLD in 2021.
Meanwhile, Rai’s letter to Chaudhury also stated that he entered politics inspired by Loknayak Jayaprakash Narayan’s ‘Total Revolution’ movement of 1974-75. He said that issues such as corruption, inflation, unemployment, the weakening of democratic institutions, and administrative accountability were major concerns at that time, and the vision of systemic change remains unfulfilled even today.
Citing former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Rai said that Vajpayee had also described the growing influence of money power in politics and polls a serious threat to democracy. Later, interacting with media persons, Rai said as of now, he had no plan to join any political party.