LUCKNOW: Hitting the battleground in western UP, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav asserted on Friday that his alliance with Rashtriya Lok Dal was ‘rock solid’ following the BJP’s overture to his RLD counterpart Jayant Chaudhary.
Flanked by Jayant, Akhilesh asserted that the alliance was very much together. “I want to convey to all those who had some misconception that we are together and our alliance is stronger,” he said to a query over the feeler from Union Home Minister Amit Shah to Jayant two days ago.
“One can understand their desperation. Look at their situation. They are inviting Jayant in the middle of elections,” Akhilesh said, mocking at Shah’s observation that the RLD chief was in a wrong family. Jayant has already ruled out any possibility of a post-poll alliance with the BJP. While rejecting the BJP’s offer, he said that instead of inviting him, the BJP should think of helping those 700 farmer families who lost their kin during the year-long agitation.
Western UP’s 58 seats, including Muzaffarnagar, will go to polls in the first phase on February 10. The BJP is trying hard to hold the Jat vote given that the community supported it overwhelmingly since the 2014 general elections. It realises the anger among the Jat farmers over the contentious farm laws and the consequent unrest despite the Centre repealing the acts in November last year.
In Muzaffarnagar, Akhilesh claimed that his alliance with Jayant should be known as the ‘sons of two farmers’. He was responding to a query over the analogy with his alliance with Rahul Gandhi in 2017 and they way it was known as ‘UP ke ladke’ (boys of UP).
The SP chief, meanwhile, reiterated his promises including 300 units of free electricity to all, free electricity to farmers for irrigation, MSP for every crop, payment of arrears to cane growers in 15 days, a corpus fund for making the payments of cane growers, interest-free loans, insurance and restoration of old pension scheme. He also promised to continue the distribution of free laptop to students like in his previous rule.