The Jayant factor: What’s in the big shift for RLD, BJP

Speaking about his party chief and his crossover to the NDA fold, an RLD leader said, “Woh kam bolte hain lekin jab aur jahan jawab dena hota hai toh sakhti se dete hain (He doesn’t speak much but when he needs to, he does so firmly).”

It’s this part of his personality, this leader insists, that came into play when Jayant ended weeks of speculation with his not-so-subtle tweet, “Dil jeet liya”, in response to the Prime Minister’s announcement of Bharat Ratna for his grandfather and former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Jayant (left) with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav during an election rally in Bijnor district. (Express Photo)

A couple of days later, he announced his shift to the NDA camp, dealing a second blow to the Opposition INDIA alliance that had barely recovered from the JD(U)’s exit.

Heir apparent, ties with SP

Born in 1978 in the US, where his father Ajit Singh worked as a software engineer, Jayant, who graduated from Delhi University and did his Master’s in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics, made his political debut in 2009. Under the close watch of his father, Jayant contested — and won — the Mathura Lok Sabha seat in the Lok Sabha elections of that year.

The 2019 elections were significant for UP’s politics since that year, two of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh’s rivals, the BSP led by Mayawati and Ajit Singh’s RLD, joined hands with the SP to contest together. (Suvajit Dey)

While Ajit Singh managed to sustain his father Charan Singh’s Lok Dal variety of politics in the sugarcane belt of West UP — by bringing together the party’s Jat constituency and a section of Muslims — given the BJP’s aggressive luring of the Hindu vote, this would soon prove to be a strategy with diminishing returns.

The year 2013 was to severely dent the RLD’s prospects in Western UP. The Jat-Muslim social arrangement nurtured by the party broke with the Muzaffarnagar riots that saw around 50,000 Muslims being displaced during Akhilesh Yadav’s term as CM.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the RLD lost all the eight seats it contested, with Ajit Singh failing to win from his home turf of Baghpat and Jayant, the sitting MLA from Mathura, too ending up on the losing side. The BJP won all eight seats.

Ajit Singh with his son Jayant. (Express Photo by Amit Mehra)

The next state election, in 2017, was the last where Ajit Singh made some interventions. Then came the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and Jayant took complete control of the party and its decision making.

For the first time since Ajit Singh founded the RLD in 1996, Jayant broke down the barriers his father had erected between himself and the Samajwadi Party. Jayant approached Akhilesh, who had then newly taken over as SP chief, for an alliance.

The 2019 elections were significant for UP’s politics since that year, two of SP patriarch Mulayam Singh’s rivals, the BSP led by Mayawati and Ajit Singh’s RLD, joined hands with the SP to contest together.

While the Mulayam-Maywati rivalry, which has defined UP politics for decades, started with the guesthouse incident of 1995, in the case of Mulayam and Ajit Singh, the fallout was over the socialist legacy of Chaudhary Charan Singh.

(From left) Pawan Kumar Bansal, Ajit Singh, PM Manmohan Singh, and Jayant during the birth anniversary celebrations of Chaudhary Charan Singh. (Express/Anil Sharma)

A veteran socialist leader, who was active in the 1970s’ Lok Dal led by Charan Singh, recalls Ajit Singh was in the US when a young Mulayam, who has served as state president of Lok Dal, earned Chaudhary Charan Singh’s trust. The veteran socialist leader says Ajit “got a little late” in claiming Charan Singh’s legacy and Mulayam beat him to it. This paid off for Mulayam in 1989 when the Janata Dal formed the government in UP and he was picked over Ajit for the chief minister’s post. The bitterness stayed, though Ajit Singh supported Mulayam’s government in 2003 with his 15 MLAs.

Following a prolonged illness, Ajit Singh passed away in May 2021 and Jayant took over as party president the same month.

Though he stayed on in the SP-Congress camp, there was another factor that was at play in Western UP. With the BJP making inroads into the region since 2013, Jayant had reasons to worry. It was clear that the Jats had shifted to the BJP in large numbers and the RLD’s social coalition now stood frayed.

RLD leaders Ajit Singh (right) and son Jayant (left). (Express/Tashi Tobgyal)

In the Lok Sabha elections that year, the RLD, part of a coalition with the SP, BSP and Congress, contested only three seats — Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat and Mathura. All of them, including Ajit and Jayant, finished runners-up behind the BJP. But this time, there were straws to clutch at. In Muzaffarnagar, Ajit secured 49.2% of the vote, just 0.4% votes shy of the winner, while Jayant won 48.5% of the votes in Baghpat, losing out by 1.8% of the votes.

But the slide continued. In the 2022 Assembly polls, of the 33 seats that the RLD contested, it won eight, though its vote share improved from 1.8% in 2017 to 2.9%.

Jayant, however, made his presence felt with a defining win for his party candidate in the crucial Khatauli bypoll held over six months after the 2022 state elections. It was a high stakes election since it was in Kawal village, in Khatauli, that the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots erupted over the killing of two Jat youths and a Muslim.

RLD performance in 2014 Lok Sabha polls

The RLD-SP alliance soon rose to the next level and Akhilesh was seen sharing space with Jayant in press conferences and election campaigns. Akhilesh and Jayant would often take to social media to share photographs of the two together, furthering the image of a happy alliance.

But with another Lok Sabha election looming, the writing was on the wall — crossing over to the NDA would ensure that the RLD can at least hold its head above water. At least for now.

Jayant paying tributes to his grandfather’s statue at the state party headquarters in Lucknow. (Express/Vishal Srivastav)

Why the BJP needs RLD

Riding on the back of the Ram temple consecration, the BJP was already confident about its prospects in the Lok Sabha elections in UP when the RLD entered its fold.

Why then did the BJP, which is confident of a good showing in the region without or without the RLD, work to get Jayant into its fold?

A BJP insider told The Indian Express that apart from dealing a blow to the INDIA alliance, winning the RLD over is part of a strategy to ensure a “clean sweep” for the party-led alliance.

“The alliance is a blow to the INDIA bloc in general and for the SP and Congress in particular. At the same time, had the INDI alliance remained intact, there was a chance that they would have managed some seats in Western UP that have a high proportion of Muslims and a significant presence of Jats. With Jayant coming over to the NDA, we are set for a clean sweep in Western UP,” the leader said.

Jayant (third from left) with BSP supremo Mayawati. (Express/Vishal Srivastav)

Another leader added that the alliance was more important for Jayant than for the BJP.

“The last Lok Sabha election, Ajit Singh and Jayant both lost their seats despite a grand Opposition alliance in the state, suggesting that the BJP was seeing an incremental growth even among Jats. Another debacle would have been difficult for him to handle. So, Jayant has ensured that his party survives this time and also wins the few seats it gets,” said the leader adding that if the BJP continues growing, the RLD may eventually get assimilated into the BJP. “But that would be an honourable exit route, rather than a sorry one, for the party,” the BJP leader said.