LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh sugarcane development and sugar industry minister Laxmi Narayan Chaudhary, an MLA from Chhata assembly constituency in Mathura, presented an embarrassing situation for his party and the state government by calling ally Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) a ‘spoiler’ and saying any party that formed an alliance with it lost power.Consequently, the Jayant Chaudhary-led party upped the ante against the minister, demanding his removal from the Yogi cabinet.Notably, addressing a gathering in Mathura on Sunday, Chaudhary said any party that allied with the RLD was doomed and faced defeat in elections.In 2002, when the BJP, led by Rajnath Singh, formed an alliance with the RLD, it lost the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, Chaudhary claimed.Earlier, when the RLD joined the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government, the Narasimha Rao (Congress) government, or the VP Singh (National Front) government, all lost power in the subsequent elections, he added.In the 2024 Lok Sabha election, the BJP won 240 seats despite setting a target of 400, he remarked. The BJP had joined hands with a jinxed party, the RLD, in 2024, said the minister.Reacting to the statement on Tuesday, state minister Anil Kumar, an RLD MLA, said the statement of the senior BJP leader and a cabinet minister was baseless, unfounded and improper.“The decision to stitch an alliance is the right and ambit of the central leadership of both the parties. Raising questions on alliance is not proper,” said the minister, who joined the Yogi cabinet in 2024 after the RLD and BJP came together in UP and at the Centre.Similarly, RLD national general secretary Anil Dubey accused Chaudhary of trying to break the BJP-RLD alliance.
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