The party has not crossed the 4% vote share mark since its inception.
New Delhi: The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which was widely expected to add significantly to the Samajwadi Party’s electoral power in Uttar Pradesh, could not break its limitation of crossing the 4% vote share mark, a feature that has been associated with it since it came into inception two-and-a-half decades ago.
In the result announced on Thursday, the RLD got 26.30 lakh votes which translates to 2.85% of the total votes polled. RLD had fielded candidates in 33 seats, out of which it won eight seats.
In view of the perceived anger against the BJP “double-engine” governments due to the three farm laws, political commentators and observers had theorised that the Jayant Chaudhary-led RLD, which is marketed by its supporters as a party of “farmers”, would in this election not only get the maximum number of votes that it has ever got, but it will also ensure that the Samajwadi Party candidates get a large share of the vote of farmers and the Jat community, which RLD claims to exclusively represent. Jat voters have a prominent presence in at least 10 Lok Sabha seats and around 40 Assembly seats of Western Uttar Pradesh and comprise around 12% of the total population.
Due to the death of party patriarch Ajit Singh in May 2021, some experts had stated that the RLD candidates would perform even better as a result of the sympathy generated due to the demise of Singh because of Covid-19. However, all these factors could not make much impact on the electoral fortunes of the RLD. The party was able to increase its votes polled by about 11 lakh votes from what it had got in the 2017 elections, but it stayed well under the 4% percent vote share.
In the 2017 polls, the RLD had got 15.45 lakh votes, or 1.78% of the total votes that were polled , the lowest vote share that it had polled. Since 2002, in the four Assembly elections that have been held in Uttar Pradesh, the RLD has contested on 615 Assembly seats (38 in 2002, 254 in 2007, 46 in 2012 and 277 in 2017) either in an alliance with other parties or on its own, and has won on 34 seats, which puts its winning percentage at 5.5%. In effect, for every 100 candidates that the RLD puts out, roughly 6 of them win. In the 2012 elections, it got 2.33% votes. In the 2007 elections, it got 3.70% (the highest vote share it has ever got). In 2002, this figure was 2.48%. This was the first Assembly election that the RLD was fighting under its new president Jayant Chaudhary, who was anointed the party president in May 2021.