Lucknow, Dec 11 (IANS): Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), an ally of the Samajwadi Party and member of the INDIA bloc, has started work in five Lok Sabha constituencies of west Uttar Pradesh that it proposes to contest in the Lok Sabha elections.

The constituencies are Baghpat, Mathura, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut and Ghaziabad.

The RLD sources said that party President Jayant Chaudhary has decided to deploy senior party workers to assess the ground situation in these constituencies which have a sizable presence of its core Jat vote bank.

The RLD, apparently, is not waiting for constituents of INDIA bloc to finalise seat sharing and is determined to contest these five seats.

The RLD will organise its youth convention in Meerut on January 7 to win over young voters, primarily from the Jat community, who apparently shifted loyalty to BJP since the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The development comes days after Samajwadi Party (SP) Chief Akhilesh Yadav made it clear that only winning candidates, irrespective of party affiliations, might be given a ticket to defeat the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

RLD has been seeking to bolster its footprints in at least 12 LS seats. Sources said that the party was refurbishing its strategy while lending a leeway to SP in deciding the broader draft of seat sharing.

Of the five seats, RLD had contested three -- Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat and Mathura -- in the 2019 elections but lost all. This was despite RLD being a part of the SP-BSP alliance.

The Congress too did not field candidates in Muzaffarnagar and Baghpat from where the then RLD chief, late Ajit Singh, and his son Jayant contested. In Mathura, RLD’s Narendra Singh lost to BJP’s Hema Malini. Meerut and Ghaziabad were won by BJP’s Rajendra Agarwal and V.K. Singh, respectively.

RLD national secretary Anupam Mishra said the party was working to strengthen its organisational machinery and expand its political base. He said that the party has decided to go in for expansion in Rajasthan where it won the Bharatpur Assembly seat.