Ajit Singh dumps JD(U) to bargain with the BJP

The BJP is already looking for potential allies to win the crucial UP Assembly elections and to arrest its declining political graph, a source says

Former Prime Minister Charan Singh's son Ajit Singh (77) is bargaining with the Bharatiya Janata Party for an electoral alliance in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, abandoning Janata Dal(U) chief and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar wanting him to merge his Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) party into a new national party.

The BJP is already looking for potential allies to win the crucial U.P. Assembly elections to arrest its declining political graph, but Ajit Singh's demands are tough to be heeded immediately, a BJP source said, pointing out that he wants 45 of the 50 Assembly seats in western UP to the RLD, a berth for himself in the Modi government and a prominent role to his exMP son Jayant Choudhary (37) who lost Mathura Lok Sabha seat to film star Hema Malini in 2014.

Ajit Singh, who has been part of the UPA, NDA and Third Front governments at the Centre for over 25 years, still commands respect as the tallest Jat leader in the country, but his chips are down since after he lost his traditional Baghpat Lok Sabha seat in 2014 and went into a political wilderness.

The BJP is treating his postures cautiously because of his past background when he had merged his party into the Congress but revived it just before the elections when the Congress refused to give the party ticket to all his candidates in the Western Uttar Pradesh, the BJP source said.