Close on the heels of the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party forming an alliance in Uttar Pradesh, Rashtriya Lok Dal vice-president Jayant Chaudhary, met SP chief Akhilesh Yadav to discuss the matter of seat sharing in Uttar Pradesh.

The meeting between Chaudhary and Akhilesh Yadav comes after both the SP and BSP agreed to contest on 38 seats each in Uttar Pradesh, leaving little room for the RLD to manoeuvre, especially after Mayawati announced that the two seats had been left for the “allies”.

“It was a good meeting with Akhilesh ji. I feel that we will be successful in our effort,” Chaudhary said while leaving Akhilesh’s residence in Delhi.

The announcement of the SP-BSP alliance without the RLD had upset both the party’s national president Ajit Singh and Chaudhary.

The RLD wants to contest on five seats. While Mayawati had said that the alliance would leave two seats - Rae Bareli and Amethi - for the allies, Akhilesh did not give a reply on whether the two seats had been left for the RLD.

Later, senior SP leader Ram Gopal Yadav had clarified that the SP-BSP alliance had left the two seats for the RLD only to contest.

Jayant Chaudhary’s meeting on Wednesday is possibly to obtain anything between 1 to 3 seats for it to contest from.

On Tuesday, BSP chief Mayawati had asked the workers of both SP and BSP to forget the past and work together to ensure a victory for the alliance in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. She said that such a victory would be her birthday gift which she marked on January 15, this year.

First Published: Jan 16, 2019 14:56 IST