The Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh is planning to script a new political alliance in UP by raising the issue of a memorial for his father and former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh.
Formally turning the memorial into a “prestige” issue for the farmers of western UP, Bharatiya Kisan Union leader and a close aide of Ajit Singh, Rakesh Tikait, who has been spearheading the campaign for memorial, has announced a grand “Kisan Swabhiman (Farmers' presitge)”rally on October 12 in Meerut.
The rally is expected to bring together on one stage all prominent Samajwadi and lohiawadi leaders who have been associated with Chaudhary Charan Singh. Among them will be Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh, Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, former Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda, former Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and fellow JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and Haryana Chief Minster Bhupinder Hooda.
The State RLD president Munna Singh Chauhan told The Hindu that Sharad Yadav has been requested to persuade all these leaders to come together on one stage to demand that the 12 Tughlak Road residence of Chaudhary Charan Singh be turned into a memorial.
“All those leaders were associated with Chaudhary saheb who was recognized across the political spectrum as an undisputed farmer leader. The time has come for all the Samajwadi and secular leaders to come together and fight communal forces,” Mr Chauhan said.
“A strategic understanding is being shared in all the political parties opposed to the communal politics that a grand alliance against BJP, is needed to avoid division of votes. Ahead of the 2017 UP Assembly polls this understanding needs to be made more concrete, especially now that the support for SP getting diverse and also Ajit Singh’s party being revived in western UP over the issue of the insult meted out to Chaudhary Charan Singh,” said a senior SP leader who is also a minister of state in the Akhilesh Yadav government.
Some RLD leaders in Meerut point out the significance of the rally in the context of the "strategic understanding" among all the anti-BJP parties and teh possibility of some sort of alliance among them. Rakesh Tikait, who is considered close to Ajit Singh told The Hindu that it would be “premature to say some thing at this stage" but highlighted that “right now all the followers and traditional associates of Charan Singh need to come together”.
