Putting to rest the buzz in the sections of the media that Rashtriya Lok Dal is joining the Bharatiya Janta Party-led National Democratic Alliance, party chief Chaudhary Jayant Singh told The Hindu on July 11 that he would be attending the Opposition meeting in Bengaluru on July 17.
A close aide of Mr. Singh said that the news of the party joining the NDA was “BJP-sponsored” and that Mr. Singh had already booked a flight for Bengaluru for the second round of talks between the Opposition parties to draw a strategy for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The speculation started after the Rajya Sabha MP had not attended the Patna meeting last month because of a family function. It was later fuelled by the statements made by Union Minister Ramdas Athwale and Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party Chief Omprakash Rajbhar. On Monday, BJP’s UP president Bhupendra Chaudhary told reporters in Rampur that he would personally welcome Mr Singh if he joined the NDA.
Mohammad Islam, national spokesperson, RLD said, “After standing up to the BJP’s divisive ideology for more than a decade, there is no point in switching sides,” he said, underling that Mr Singh was holding meetings across 1500 villages as part of the party’s ongoing Samrasta (harmony) Abhiyan where the focus is on strengthening bhaichara (brotherhood) among communities. “In these meetings, the last one held in Baghpat last week, he has consistently spoken against the BJP’s divisive politics,” he said.
In an earlier interview with The Hindu, Mr. Singh questioned the current structure of the NDA and said unlike the Vajpayee era, when the RLD was part of the NDA fold, it was centered around one party and the government.
A senior party leader said the BJP was threatened by the party’s growing influence in the West U.P., especially among the Muslim voters and they wanted to sow a seed of suspicion in the minds of the minority community. “That the RLD could switch sides before or after the Lok Sabha polls,” he said.
Having said that, he added that the party expected a respectable share of seats from the alliance partner Samajwadi Party in West U.P. He pointed out that the party had won the Khatauli bypoll and did well in the urban local body elections while the Samajwadi Party (SP) lost its pocket boroughs in Rampur and its mayor candidate finished behind All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen’s candidate in Meerut. “Akhilesh Yadav has to understand the complexity of U.P. politics, demands of Lok Sabha polls, and give due respect to the allies. When Mamata Banerjee has accepted the role of the Congress in Opposition alliance, why is Mr. Yadav taking time,” he wondered, pointing out Mr. Yadav’s meeting with the BRS chief K. Chandrashekhar Rao after the Patna meet.
“We have seen how the SP let the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party slip from the alliance after the Assembly polls and could not stitch ties with Azad Samaj Party before the elections,” he added.
