Jayant Chaudhary accuses BJP of hurting sanctity of UP Elections

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Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Chaudhary on Thursday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of hurting the sanctity of the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh legislative council elections for the victory of its candidates. He was addressing a joint meeting of Samajwadi Party-Rashtriya Lok Dal alliance leaders and workers in Meerut ahead of the MLC elections.

RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary alleged the people witnessed how the alliance candidates were “thrashed” and their clothes “torn off” while the police remained a mute spectator to these incidents.

On Wednesday, RLD candidate Sunita Sharma withdrew her nomination for the Bulandshahr-Gautam Buddha Nagar (local authority) seat.

The election to fill 36 UP legislative council (local authorities’) seats is scheduled on April 9.

To a question about the SP-RLD alliance’s defeat in the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Jayant Chaudhary said the RLD received over 26 lakh votes, which is not a small number.

“In many states, governments are formed on the basis of such a large number of votes,” he said. He expressed his gratitude to youths and farmers who voted for RLD. Chaudhary said the party would analyse its shortcomings and move forward while learning lessons from these mistakes.

To a question about his meeting with Azad Samaj Party chief Chandrashekhar Azad, he said they are together in the battle for social justice and many other issues.

“He apprised me about the incident in Pali, Rajasthan (where a Dalit youth was murdered),” the RLD chief said.

He appealed to leaders and workers of both parties to work hard to ensure the victory of RLD candidate Sunil Rohta from the Meerut- Ghaziabad constituency.

Asked whether he would attend Yogi Adityanath’s oath-taking ceremony, he said that he does not go to any programme without an invitation. He clarified that he won’t attend it even after getting an invitation. He further said such programmes lacked the virtues they had earlier.

Farmers were called hooligans and terrorists during elections, which also witnessed statements like “80 vs 20”, he said. The RLD chief said he preferred keeping a distance from people with such ideologies.

Reacting to Jayant Chaudhary’s statement, BJP (Meerut) city president Mukesh Singhal said it is baseless because they have nothing to say after their defeat in the assembly elections. He further said the BJP is a democratic party and believes in the ethos of democracy.

(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)