Ajit Singh, Mulayam Singh hold talks on seat-sharing In Uttar Pradesh

TIL Desk/National/New Delhi-Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader and former Union Minister Ajit Singh called on Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh here on Sunday, hours after his brother Shivpal Singh Yadav had called on the RLD chief. While there was no official statement on the outcome of the meeting, a source close to the RLD chief said the meetings were to discuss potential seat-sharing in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls to be held next year.

Sources say Mr. Singh wants a Rajya Sabha berth and 50 seats his party out of the 403 in Uttar Pradesh, but there was no official confirmation of the same. The RLD was once a force in western U.P., which has a powerful population of Jats. Mr. Singh’s father and former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh was recognised as a very influential Jat leader decades back. However, the 2014 Lok Sabha polls posed a challenge to Mr. Singh, who lost substantive Jat support to the BJP, which swept the State after the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013.