Jayant Chaudhary elected new Rashtriya Lok Dal chief

LUCKNOW: Jayant Chaudhary was formally elected as the new chief of Rashtriya Lok Dal on Tuesday, nineteen days after his father and party president Ajit Singh succumbed to Covid at a Gurugram hospital.
The decision to elevate Jayant, who was party vice-president, was taken at party’s national executive organised virtually in the wake of the pandemic.
His name was proposed and backed by party national general secretaries Triloki Tyagi and Munshiram Pal, respectively, after which the national executive gave its approval.
Addressing the executive Jayant pledged to follow the path shown by his grandfather and former PM Charan Singh and father Ajit Singh. He said that villagers and farmers would be his party's top priority.
Jayant replacing his father as RLD president comes at a time when the party faces a political crisis amid BJP ramping up its organisational machinery ahead of the high stake UP assembly elections due next year.
Experts said that Jayant will face a challenging task of reclaiming lost political ground by consolidating the Jat vote bank which had decisively shifted towards the BJP under the leadership of PM Narendra Modi.