The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and Samajwadi Party alliance in UP apparently hinges on the merger issue.
The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) and Samajwadi Party alliance in UP apparently hinges on the merger issue.
If sources are to be believed, the Samajwadi leaders wanted RLD president Chaudhary Ajit Singh to merge his party into the Samajwadi Party and this was not acceptable to the RLD. The SP was unsure of the intentions of the RLD leader and, therefore, insisted on the merger.
“There has been a great deal of mistrust between the leaders of the two parties and a merger would have ensured that Mr Ajit Singh does not move off to greener pastures again. We have no problem in giving him a Rajya Sabha seat and a Vidhan Parishad seat to his son but merger was the core issue”, said a senior SP leader on Tuesday.
SP MP Prof Ram Gopal Yadav has already declared that Mr Ajit Singh lacks “political credibility” and an alliance with such forces is not advisable. He was obviously referring to Mr Ajit Singh moving towards the JD (U), then gravitating towards the BJP and the BSP and now the SP — all in the past three months.
Senior UP minister Shivpal Singh Yadav said that he wanted to bring the followers of Gandhi, Lohia and Charan Singh on one platform to fight communal forces. Thos favouring the tie up with RLD felt that this would check the influence of the BSP in the region.
The RLD , on the other hand, was not willing to merge the party into the SP unless differences between Mr Ajit Singh and Mr Mulayam Singh are ironed out.
“We cannot plunge ourselves into uncertainty and that too, in a party that centres around one family”, said a RLD leader in Lucknow.
Another factor that made the SP wary of an alliance with the RLD was the risk of losing Muslim support in western UP. After Muzaffarnagar riots, Muslims, having 26 per cent population, and Jats, who have a 19 per cent population in the region, have been at loggerheads and an alliance with RLD, which has a base among Jats, could have upset Muslims.
“Besides, if Ajit Singh had agreed to merge his party with the SP, we could have got Muslim as well as Jat support because Muslims are inclined towards the SP”, said a SP leader.
The section in the SP that opposed the alliance, also felt that this would demolish the party’s organisational base in the region.
“Mr Ajit Singh laid claim on 55 seats out of the 80 Assembly seats in the region. Giving away these seats to another party would have meant demolishing our own party organisation on these seats. Look what happened to the Congress after it gave away 300 seats to BSP in 1996”, the leader said.
