Rashtriya Lok Dal

The Rashtriya Lok Dal is an Indian regional political party in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. It was founded by Chaudhary Ajit Singh, son of the former prime minister of India, Chaudhary Charan Singh in 1996 as a breakaway faction of the Janata Dal.

History

Ajit Singh was re-elected in 1996 as a Congress candidate but resigned from the party and Lok Sabha. He then founded Bharatiya Kisan Kamgar Party and was re-elected from Baghpat in 1997 by-election.
In 1999, he relaunched his party with the name Rashtriya Lok Dal. While Singh lost the 1998 election and was re-elected in 1999, 2004 and 2009. From 2001 to 2003, he was Minister of Agriculture in Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government. After his party joined the ruling United Progressive Alliance in 2011, he was Minister of Civil Aviation from December 2011 to May 2014. In 2019 Indian general election, he contested from Muzaffarnagar but lost to Sanjeev Balyan of BJP by a very small margin of 6526 votes.
RLD could not make any strong presence from 2014 to 2022, even losing its traditional seats. On the other hand, the party was able to win nine of 33 seats in the 2022 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election which it contested in alliance with Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh which gave boost to the party life.
In 2024 Indian general election, the party joined the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance and it won both the seats from which it contested in alliance.

Lok Sabha

The Rashtriya Lok Dal has state units in Jharkhand, Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and other states.