UP Elections 2022: He pointed out that several BJP heavyweights lost their seats in west UP.
In his first interview after the opposition alliance's defeat in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Akhilesh Yadav's ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader Jayant Chaudhary claimed that they defeated the BJP in areas that were the most affected by communal riots and where the issue of the exodus of Hindu residents was raised. Mr Chaudhary also declared that RLD will contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in alliance with Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party.
Responding to questions by NDTV on the poor performance of the coalition in west UP, where they claimed to exercise huge influence, the 43-year-old farmers' leader said they defeated the BJP in Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and Meerut - areas most affected by the 2013 communal riots.
"They (BJP) fanned the issue of exodus of Hindus in Kairana, we defeated them there," he said.
He pointed out that BJP heavyweights like Sangeet Som, Umesh Malik and Suresh Rana lost their seats in west UP.
"The elections wasn't 80 vs 20," he said, referring to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's highly controversial "80 versus 20 battle" remark which many claimed implied a religious divide. The numbers cited by the Chief Minister roughly correspond to the ratio of Hindus to Muslims in UP.
Mr Chaudhary claimed that farmers' agitation had an effect on the poll results and acknowledged that his party couldn't relay their message to the public very effectively.
"We have lost with a margin of fewer than 500 votes on many seats," he said and added that they lost the entire Brij and Ghaziabad belt.
The RLD chief also blamed the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party's poor performance for the opposition's loss.
"We have learned a lot from this election...I can tell you that we will contest even the 2024 Lok Sabha elections with Akhilesh Yadav," he said.
He claimed that despite being upset with the BJP, the people didn't reflect it in their votes.
"We will raise important issues being in the opposition and won't let BJP further the 80 vs 20 narrative," he said.
RLD fielded candidates on 33 seats in western Uttar Pradesh but only managed to win 8 seats and secure a 2.85% vote share. However, it's a big jump from the 2017 elections when it managed to win just one seat.
BJP and its allies won a total of 273 out of the 403 seats in the politically significant state. This was a drop of 49 seats from the party's tally in the 2017 elections when it unseated the Samajwadi Party government.
The Akhilesh Yadav-led party won 111 seats on its own and the alliance led by it posted a victory in 125 constituencies. This was a jump of 73 from its show in the 2017 election. This was also the Samajwadi Party's best performance ever.