Lucknow: The war of words over Jat pride has brought BJP ally Rashtriya Lok Dal’s electoral strategy into focus. A day after Union minister and RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary accused the Samajwadi Party of belittling the community with its “chavanni to rupee” remark, attention turned to the party’s aggressive bid to consolidate Jat voters and enhance its leverage with BJP ahead of the UP Assembly elections.“In the battle of politics, if you had to use some cheap words, you could at least have taken my name. It wouldn’t have been an issue. But targeting the Jat community and claiming that you taught us the ABCD of politics? I’ve seen this arrogance up close, and I believe such behaviour only leads to downfall,” Jayant said.His retort came a week after Akhilesh Yadav remarked: “Who knows where these alliance partners came from? We turned a chavanni into a rupee, and even then they left us.”RLD was an SP ally in the 2022 UP elections but shifted to the NDA camp ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls after Modi govt conferred the Bharat Ratna on Jayant’s grandfather and former PM Chaudhary Charan Singh. Interestingly, just before RLD crossed over to the saffron camp, Jayant had said that he was “not a chavanni (25-paise coin) that would flip”.RLD working president Anupam Mishra said the party has decided to leave the issue to the Jat community to judge for itself the treatment it received from SP.“It is an emotional community and will certainly teach the SP a lesson in the 2027 assembly elections,” Mishra said.Sources said RLD plans to capitalise on the controversy and consolidate its position among the electorally significant Jats in western Uttar Pradesh.“This will allow the party to strengthen its footprint among its core support base while putting it up a stronger bargaining position with the BJP during seat-sharing negotiations,” a party source said.SP spokesperson Sudhir Panwar said the issue was being deliberately blown out of proportion. “The elections will be fought on pressing issues such as farmer distress and inflation, not on the identity of any community,” he asserted.Panwar said Jayant was turning the issue into an emotional one for political convenience. According to him, Akhilesh’s “chavanni” remark was merely a variation of the phrase “Aaya Ram, Gaya Ram”, traditionally used for political turncoats.Political analysts said the controversy could reinforce the perception of RLD as an essentially Jat-dominated outfit, restricting it largely to its traditional stronghold in western Uttar Pradesh in the Assembly elections.Sources said the episode was likely to encourage RLD to further consolidate its position in Jat-dominated pockets while giving BJP a wider electoral space beyond the community.In 2024, Uttar Pradesh elected three Jat MPs, one each from SP (Harendra Malik), BJP (Rajkumar Chahar) and RLD (Raj Kumar Sangwan). Jayant, himself a Jat leader, was elected to the Rajya Sabha with the support of SP. In the 2022 UP Assembly elections, 16 Jat MLAs were elected — 10 from BJP, four from RLD, and two from SP.
