Express News Service
LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi Party is banking on the Jayant Chaudhary-led Rashtriya Lok Dal to conquer western UP where the Jat-Muslim combination is a major force.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and his RLD counterpart sat on Thursday to draw the contours of seat-sharing in which the focus was on the seats which the former UP CM would leave for the RLD in western region.
While Jats make around 1-2% of the UP population, they constitute around 7-9% in western UP. Around 100 segments in this region have Jats as swing voters. Muslims have influence in even more constituencies.
As per sources, the RLD had demanded around 50 seats but the SP agreed to concede 30. However, those privy to the talks claimed that the final agreement stood at 36 which the SP is ready to spare for the RLD.
“There will be a few seats on which RLD will field its candidates on SP symbol and vice-versa,” said a senior RLD leader.
In 2017, the BJP won around 104 of the 128 seats in the region followed by the SP 18 and the RLD one. The RLD, which had contested in 277 seats then, saw its lone MLA joined the BJP in 2018.
“The Thursday discussions were more to fine-tune the seat sharing in western UP which is the region of the RLD’s influence, and formulating Jat-Muslim-Dalit equation and combining it with the SP’s vote base,” the RLD leader said.
The SP had allied with the Congress in the 2017 Assembly polls and stitched a grand alliance with BSP and RLD in the 2019 general elections. But both the alliances failed to work for the SP whose seats fell from 224 to 47 in 2017.
