Thursday, 27 January 2022 | Deepak Upreti | New Delhi
Top BJP leader and Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday reached out to the Jat leaders and sought to send feelers to the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) which has struck an alliance with the rival Samajwadi Party (SP).
Shah met 250 Jat leaders here and understood to have conveyed that the BJP was a natural ally of theirs and RLD leader Jayant Choudhary has “chosen a wrong house”.
The BJP leader apparently indicated “many possibilities of a post-poll alliance” with the RLD.
Jats which form 17 per cent of the western UP population may influence around 120 Assembly seats.
Union Minister Sanjiv Balyan and BJP MP Pravesh attended the discussion. Balyan and Verma are both jats.
After the meeting with the Jat community with the Union Home Minister, Verma quoted Shah as saying that there are “many possibilities”.
He also indicated post-poll alliance with the RLD even as the latter has chosen the SP in the UP polls and referred to the “Kisan legacy” of late Jat leader and former Prime Minister Charan Singh.
Verma quoted Shah saying that the Jat community always supported the BJP and voted for the saffron party in 2007, 2012 or 2017.
Balyan said, “Talks were held in a good atmosphere and holds out the promise of cooperation between the Jats and the party”.
Balyan had recently held a “peace talk” with the brother of the anti-Central farm laws leader and Bharatiya Kisan Union head Rakesh Tikait and tried to rope him in the BJP fold. Tikait had undertaken an anti-Government stance on the farm laws with Jat farmers leaning against the BJP.
The western UP is going to polls in the first two phases of the State elections on February 10 and February 14.
