Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal moves out of INDIA bloc, joins NDA

In a major setback to the Opposition INDIA bloc, Jayant Chaudhary's Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has formed an alliance with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. As per the seat-sharing agreement, the RLD will contest two Lok Sabha seats at Baghpat and Bijnor, and has also been promised a seat at the Rajya Sabha.

Later, addressing a press conference, Jayant Chaudhary said Prime Minister Narendra Modi understands the pulse of the nation.

"Modi Ji's vision did what any other party could not do, till now," he said.

Jayant Chaudhary's RLD has pockets of influence in western Uttar Pradesh and the BJP hopes to gain in this region that is home to the influential Jat community.

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

The development comes amid differences over seat sharing between the INDIA bloc constituents in Uttar Pradesh. There remains no breakthrough in seat sharing talks between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party (SP) too.

The Akhilesh Yadav-led party has, however, gone on to announce its candidates in 16 seats in Uttar Pradesh, catching the Congress off guard.

Yadav had in January said that the RLD would be allotted seven seats, but there was no clarity about which constituencies would be allotted.

The RLD and the Samajwadi Party have been allies in Uttar Pradesh since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2019 polls, the RLD lost all three seats it contested while the Samajwadi Party won five seats.

In the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, Akhilesh Yadav's party won 111 seats out of the 347 it contested, while the RLD won nine of the 33 constituencies.