The BJP claimed 62 out of the state's 80 seats, while the SP bagged five seats and the BSP, 10. The RLD, which had fielded three candidates, failed register a win on even a single seat.
Undeterred by the crushing loss in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader Jayant Chowdhary has said “a person who has not tasted defeat, has actually not lived his life”. Jayant, the son of RLD chief Ajit Singh, lost to sitting BJP MP Satyapal Singh in a tantalisingly-close contest in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat.
In a video message on Saturday, Jayant said, “The BJP has registered a massive win in the Lok Sabha elections. I congratulate Prime Minister Narendra Modi and all newly-elected MPs. The entire nation is pinning its hopes on newly elected MPs that they will work for betterment of farmers, poor and traders. We will continue to contribute our bit in nation building. The constituents of the mahagathbandhan have worked very hard, and I want to thank all workers for their hardwork.”
“For young RLD workers, my message is ‘jo haara nahi woh jiyaa nahi’ (a person who has not tasted defeat has not actually lived his life). We should take a lesson from this, and at every turn of life, there is scope of self-improvement. I am not at all disappointed, and want to assure you that we will continue our fight for farmers’ rights,” he added.
Buoyed over the last year’s Kairana bypoll result, when the BJP lost to the joint opposition candidate Tabassum Hasan, the RLD had hoped of making its presence felt in the political landscape of the state this time by fighting under the banner of SP-BSP-RLD alliance. However, Hasan (SP) lost to BJP’s Pradeep Kumar by a margin of 92,160 votes. The SP-BSP-RLD Gathbandhan did not just fail to rein in the Narendra Modi charge in the elections in UP, it also suffered a complete rout of the alliance’s arithmetic.
While the BJP claimed 62 out of the state’s 80 seats, the SP bagged five seats and the BSP 10. The RLD, which had fielded three candidates, failed to register a win on even a single seat. Besides Jayant, his father and RLD supremo Ajit Singh and Kunwar Narendra Singh lost from Muzaffarnagar and Mathura, respectively.
In 2014, when the SP, BSP and RLD fought separately, their combined vote share was 42.63 per cent. It slipped to 38.92 per cent in 2019. Meanwhile, the BJP’s vote share increased from 42.63 per cent to 49.55 per cent.
UP BJP media coordinator Rakesh Tripathi told PTI, “This Lok Sabha election has proved to be the ultimate nemesis for the Rashtriya Lok Dal. Henceforth, the RLD will not be in a position to forge an alliance with any political party.”
“Only when the RLD decides to merge itself with any party, will any political party accept it. The father-son duo of Ajit Singh and Jayant Chaudhary have been unsuccessful in managing the legacy of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh. The arrogance (ahankaar) of Ajit Singh has been completely shattered in this election,” Tripathi added.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, RLD candidates had to forfeit their deposits in six of the eight Lok Sabha seats they contested from Uttar Pradesh. The party managed to poll only 0.86 per cent of total votes in the state. The father-son duo had lost the elections from their respective seats in 2014 as well.
(Inputs from PTI)
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