Days after quitting the NDA over seat allocation for Lok Sabha polls, Upendra Kushwaha-led Rashtriya Lok Samta Party (RLSP) on Thursday joined the grand alliance in Bihar, partnering the Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Hindustan Awam Morcha.
The announcement was made at the AICC office in New Delhi, where RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Congress’s Ahmed Patel and Loktantrik Janata Dal leader Sharad Yadav, among others, were present
“We are now part of the UPA. I was humiliated in NDA,” Kushwaha said at the press meet. The RLSP leader alleged that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and the BJP were conspiring to destroy his party.
Kushwaha also announced that the alliance would hold a Jan Aakrosh (public discontentment) rally in Patna on Februay 2, 2019.
Tejashwi Yadav, while welcoming Kushwaha said, “We want to give an alternative to people of Bihar… we need to sacrifice our egos in the larger national interest and start work on forming a grand alliance at the national level also.”
The former Union minister’s joining the combine is likely to give a boost to the alliance in Bihar to counter the NDA combine of Bhartiya Janata Party-Janata Dal(U)-Lok Janshakti Party.
The Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal, former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular) are already part of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and are seeking to give a fight to the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Kushwaha quit the NDA in Bihar over the seat allocation for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He had been sulking since the BJP declared that the RLSP would not be given more than two seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, even as it went out of way to accommodate Kumar by agreeing that the saffron party and the JD(U) would fight equal number of seats.
Since then, Kushwaha has reportedly been in talks with the Congress and other non-BJP parties.