In an interesting twist to the cascading impact that the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections are having on national politics, Mr Jayant Chaudhary, son of Rashtriya Lok Dal supremo and civil aviation minister Ajit Singh, resigned from his Assembly segment of Maath in UP on Tuesday. This means Mr Chaudhary will continue to retain his Lok Sabha seat of Mathura.
The RLD had sealed a pre-poll alliance with the Congress before the UP Assembly elections which saw Mr Singh’s entry into the Union Cabinet and him assuming the charge of the civil aviation minister. The RLD-Congress tieup was primarily restricted to the Jat-dominated western UP.
Highly placed government sources said Mr Chaudhary’s decision to resign from his Assembly constituency was well-calibrated and planned. The UPA-2 at the Centre needs support possibly from every MP in the alliance in the Lok Sabha, more so because relations between the Congress and its key ally, the Trinamul Congress, are at an all-time low following the controversy surrounding the resignation of railway minister Dinesh Trivedi.
Another crucial issue, sources added, that influenced Mr Chaudhary’s decision was the fact that the Samajwadi Party has managed to get a comfortable majority in the UP Assembly. Had the polls thrown up a fractured mandate, perhaps it would have given a better bargaining chip to both the Congress and RLD. But now that the fate of the RLD and the Congress is sealed in UP for five years, the RLD wants to focus on the Centre.