‘Let us all unite for victory’: Akhilesh Yadav announces alliance with Jayant Chaudhary’s RLD in UP for 2024 Lok Sabha elections | India News

NEW DELHI: The Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Lok Dal on Friday announced their alliance for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh. SP president Akhilesh Yadav and RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary announced the tie-up on social media. Ironically, this announcement was made even as the Samajwadi Party is still in talks with the Congress over sharing of Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh.All the three parties are part of the opposition’s INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) bloc.
“Congratulations to everyone on the alliance of RLD and SP. Let us all unite for victory,” Yadav said in a post on X. Reposting this tweet, Chaudhary said, “Always ready to protect national and constitutional values. We expect all workers of our alliance to move forward together for the development and prosperity of our region.”

The RLD will contest 7 seats in western Uttar Pradesh, which is the party’s stronghold, as per the agreement between the two parties. The seats have not been identified. However, the core support base of the RLD is the Jat population and according to party sources the 7 seats could be Muzaffarnagar, Kiarana, Bijnor, Mathura, Baghpat, Amroha and Meerut . Uttar Pradesh has 80 Lok Sabha seats. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the RLD could not win any seat, while the Congress had won only one and the SP 5 seats.
Akhilesh Yadav has expressed confidence that there would not be any glitches in seat-sharing talks among the constituents of the opposition’s INDIA bloc. He has also said the feud between his party and the Congress at the time of the Madhya Pradesh elections was a thing of the past. In the Madhya Pradesh assembly elections, the Congress refused to accept the demands of Samajwadi Party leading to open bitterness between the two partners of the INDIA bloc.
It will be interesting to see how the Congress reacts to this announcement of tie-up between the two regional parties who are also INDIA partners. Already the opposition space in the state is divided with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party announcing that it will contest the Lok Sabha elections without any alliance. The BSP had contested the last elections in alliance with the Samajwadi Party and had won 10 Lok Sabha seats.