Jayant Chaudhary signs a contract with the BJP and wins two seats in the Uttar Pradesh Lok Sabha

Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD has forged an alliance with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh for the 2024 Lok Sabha election, dealing another blow to the Opposition INDIA bloc. The RLD has been guaranteed a Rajya Sabha seat and will run for two Lok Sabha seats, Baghpat and Bijnor, under the terms of the seat-sharing deal.

Within the following two to three days, the partnership will formally be announced.

The BJP will want to gain ground in western Uttar Pradesh, where Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD enjoys pockets of influence due to the presence of the powerful Jat population.

In actuality, seven of the 16 seats in Uttar Pradesh that the BJP lost in the 2019 Lok Sabha election were from west UP. In the Moradabad division, it lost all six seats.

The development coincides with disagreements about Uttar Pradesh’s seat distribution among the members of the INDIA alliance. Additionally, there has been little progress in the Congress and Samajwadi Party (SP) discussions on seat sharing.

However, the Akhilesh Yadav-led party has since surprised the Congress by announcing its candidates for 16 seats in Uttar Pradesh.

Akhilesh Yadav had said in January that the RLD would get seven seats; however, it remained unclear which constituencies would receive these seats.

“Jayant Chaudhary is an educated individual, and he understands politics well,” Akhilesh said earlier this week as rumors of the RLD joining the NDA began to circulate. I’m hoping he won’t let the struggle for UP’s prosperity and farmers to wane.”

Since the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Samajwadi Party and the RLD have been partners in Uttar Pradesh. The Samajwadi Party secured five seats in the 2019 elections, while the RLD lost all three of the seats it ran for.

Akhilesh Yadav’s party won 111 of the 347 seats it contested in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election of 2022, while the RLD won nine of the 33 constituencies.