Outside home turf, RLD gets fewer votes than NOTA

The desperate bid of RLD president Ajit Singh to expand his party’s base beyond western UP has ended up in smoke.

While the footprints of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) shrank in Singh’s home turf, all its candidates outside western UP lost their deposits securing lesser votes than those polled in NOTA (none of the above) category.

And the difference in the number of votes secured by RLD candidates and received under NOTA is quite significant.

On most of the seats in central and eastern UP, Rohelkhand and Bundelkhand regions, RLD candidates got less than 1,000 votes whereas 1,500-2,000 voters opted for NOTA.

For example, Ajit Singh aggressively fielded candidates in Lucknow but people voted for NOTA more than RLD candidates.

Virendra Shukla, RLD candidate from Lucknow Cantt, got only 720 votes against 1,150 under NOTA.

Similarly, Ramesh Chandra (Lucknow Central) got a meare 554 votes against 824 under NOTA. In Lucknow East, Rohit Agrawal secured 921 votes against 1,747 under NOTA while Pramod Yadav from Lucknow West got 583 votes against NOTA’s 635.

The situation was similar in other constituencies, except for around a dozen districts in western UP, where RLD candidates stood on fourth position in most of the seats and on second and third spots on a few others.

In these constituencies too, the margin of votes between RLD candidates and their immediate rivals was wide.

Chhaprauli in Baghpat was the only seat where the RLD could win by a margin of 4,000 votes. It lost Mant in Mathura to BSP candidate by a slender margin of nearly 400 votes. RLD finished second in Baldev (Mathura) and Sadabad (Hatharas) constituencies.

RLD’s influence remains confined to 9-10 districts like Baghpat, Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Aligarh, Mathura, Hathras, and Agra. It won 9 seats in 2012, 10 in 2007 and 14 in 2002 assembly election largely from these districts.

In its worst-ever performance in terms of seats as well as vote share, the RLD has been confined to one seat in Baghpat in the 2017 assembly election.

Ajit Singh had fielded candidates on more than 300 seats – the party’s highest-ever tally in assembly polls –to win some seats outside his home turf and increase his bargaining power in the event of a hung assembly.