SP-RLD seat-sharing pact in place: How the two parties have fared in recent polls in UP

The Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), both members of the Opposition INDIA bloc, on Friday made a crucial announcement on seat-sharing negotiations. The RLD, the parties decided, would contest seven of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 Lok Sabha seats in the coming elections. Notably, the RLD has never won more than five parliamentary seats in UP in a single election.

The RLD was founded by Ajit Singh, son of former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, in 1996 and is currently led by Ajit’s son Jayant Chaudhary. The party has historically been allied with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, with Ajit serving as a Union Minister under former PM Manmohan Singh. Since 2014, though, the RLD’s influence has been limited in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the RLD contested eight seats in an alliance with the Congress but failed to win a single one. In the 2017 Assembly polls, the Congress and the SP struck an alliance and the RLD went alone. It contested 277 seats in the 403-member House, winning just one.

The SP-RLD alliance is relatively recent. The parties first came together in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The RLD contested three seats then as part of the Mahagathbandhan with the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). The RLD lost all three seats while the SP won five of the 37 seats it contested. The BSP managed to win 10 constituencies out of the 38 it contested.

By the 2022 Assembly polls, the BSP was out of the alliance with the SP, which then contested with the RLD. While the SP recorded one of its strongest performances in an Assembly poll and its best since 2012 when it came to power, winning 111 of the 347 seats it contested, the RLD won nine of the 33 seats it