RLD keen to contest three seats in upcoming UP by-polls

Lucknow, June 26 (IANS) The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has decided to contest three seats in the upcoming Uttar Pradesh by-polls.

A senior RLD leader said that RLD will contest Meerapur, Khair and Ghaziabad seats.

He said that Meerapur was a “natural choice” since the seat fell vacant after party MLA Chandan Chauhan got elected to Lok Sabha from Bijnor.

Sources said that the RLD seeks to tighten its grip in the constituency which has a sizable population of Jat and Gurjar, the two communities which play a key role in determining the electoral fortunes of any political outfit in the west UP region.

The RLD is also keen to contest from Khair reserved seat in Aligarh which turned vacant following the election of UP minister and BJP MLA Anup Valmiki from Hathras parliamentary seat.

Khair was unsuccessfully contested by RLD’s Bhagwati Prasad in the 2022 assembly elections when Jayant was in an alliance with the Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party.

Sources in RLD said that the party seeks to augment its positions amongst Dalits in the west UP region while being an ally of the BJP.

This draws a close similarity with the 2022 Khatauli by-polls which were necessitated after BJP MLA Vikram Saini was convicted for his involvement in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots.

RLD had then bargained hard with SP to contest from Khatauli.

RLD’s Madan Bhaiyya, a Gurjar, eventually defeated Vikram’s wife Rajkumari Saini by a margin of over 22,000 votes. This raised the RLD’s strength in the UP assembly from eight to nine.

In the 2022 assembly elections, Khatauli was contested by RLD’s Rajpal Saini, who, however, lost.

RLD also plans to contest from Ghaziabad, where by-elections have been necessitated following the election of BJP MLA Atul Garg to Lok Sabha.

In 2022, the seat was contested by RLD-backed SP candidate Vishal Verma, a Dalit.

RLD National Secretary Anupam Mishra said the party brass would soon discuss seat-sharing arrangement for the by-polls with the BJP. “The party has been taking all possible steps to augment its electoral position in the politically pertinent west UP region,” he said.

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