LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) on Friday announced their alliance for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh after holding seat-sharing talks. Both SP president Akhilesh Yadav and RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary took to social media platform X to announce the tie-up formally.
The announcement was made even as the Samajwadi Party is still in talks with the Congress over the issue.
All the three parties -- SP, RLD and Congress -- are part of the opposition's INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) bloc.
"Congratulations to everyone on the alliance of RLD and SP. Let us all unite for victory," Yadav said in a post on X. Reposting this tweet, Chaudhary said, "Always ready to protect national and constitutional values. We expect all workers of our alliance to move forward together for the development and prosperity of our region."
As per the SP-RLD accord, the RLD would contest seven seats, all in western UP which is its stronghold.
Sources of both parties did not reveal the seats spared by the SP for the RLD. However, the RLD, known to be a Jat party, is likely to field its candidates in Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, Bijnore, Mathura, Baghpat, Amroha and Meerut -- all having a dominant Jat community.
UP sends 80 Lok Sabha MPs to Parliament. In 2019, the SP, BSP and RLD had a grand alliance to take on the saffron juggernaut. While the RLD had failed to even open its account, the BSP had won 10 seats and the SP had to be content with just five. On the other hand, the Congress had won just one seat in Rae Bareli, losing another bastion Amethi to the BJP’s Smriti Irani who defeated Rahul Gandhi by a margin of over 50,000 votes. Meanwhile, the BJP and its allies walked away with the major chunk of seats -- 66.
Expressing confidence that there would be no hassles in seat-sharing talks among the INDIA bloc allies, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said that the feud between SP and Congress over seat-sharing at the time of the MP Assembly elections was a thing of the past and that both parties had moved on.
As per SP sources, the seat-sharing talks with the Congress have yet to yield results and a positive outcome is expected in the next round of talks. Significantly, the BSP has already announced that it would go it alone in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
