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After days of speculation, on Monday, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Chaudhary announced that his party was quitting the INDIA alliance of Opposition parties and joining the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
This partnership will help the BJP consolidate its base among Jats, who are the RLD’s core base, and place it ahead in at least seven seats in west UP where its prospects were considered grim as per ground surveys done by the party ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Over the decades, the RLD, which enjoys significant support among Jats in west UP, has allied with the BJP, the Samajwadi Party (SP), and the Congress for political survival. The alliance with the BJP, thus, was never out of the realm of possibility.
Chaudhary Ajit Singh, who went on to become a seven-time MP, formed the RLD in 1997 to build on the legacy of his father and former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh, a stalwart farmer leader. During his tenure as UP Chief Minister, Charan Singh had pushed through major legislation that transformed the state’s agricultural economy. These land reform laws helped him develop a strong base among farmers in the region.
Before he started the RLD, Ajit played a role in the Union government as part of various governments. In December 1989, Ajit, then with the Janata Dal, became the Union Cabinet Minister for Industry in the National Front government of V P Singh. He was re-elected as a Janata Dal MP in 1991. That year, a Congress-led alliance came to power under Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. Ajit was subsequently appointed Union Cabinet Minister of the Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution in February 1995.
A year later, Ajit switched to the Congress. He contested the 1996 Lok Sabha polls on a Congress ticket and won. He then left the Congress to form the Bharatiya Kisan Kamgar Party (BKKP) to represent farmers’ interests. This eventually became the RLD in 1997. Two years later, he contested the Lok Sabha polls on an RLD symbol. In July 2001, he joined the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government and became the Union Agriculture Minister
The party allied with the BJP in the 2002 UP Assembly polls, winning 14 of the 38 seats it contested. This has been its best performance in the state elections to date. But in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, the RLD partnered with the SP to consolidate OBC votes. The RLD won three of the ten seats it contested.
In 2011, the RLD joined the UPA-II government led by the Congress and Ajit became the Union Civil Aviation minister. The following year, the RLD contested the 46 seats in the UP Assembly polls in alliance with the Congress but won only nine constituencies. Two years later, in the 2014 parliamentary polls, the RLD contested again in alliance with the Congress. It fought in eight seats but lost all.
The party fought the 2017 UP Assembly polls on its own — the SP and the Congress were in alliance at the time — and won only one seat. In 2019, it partnered with the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) but lost all the three parliamentary seats it contested. In the 2022 state polls, it again contested with the SP.
The SP won 111 seats of the 347 it contested while the RLD won nine seats of the 33 where it fielded candidates. It clinched another seat by winning a bypoll the same year.
