After joining hands with Kalyan Singh to woo the Lodha votes, the SP hurriedly forged an alliance with the RLD in a bid to counter the aggressive campaign by the Congress in the upcoming bypoll in Firozabad.

On the other hand, for the RLD, the decision to go ahead with this new alliance and dumping its previous ally, the BJP, was driven by an instinct of survival. Although both the parties maintain their political understanding is confined to the Firozabad by-election, in reality, they have very few options available at hand.

Also, the desperation in both camps is evident from the way they joined hands in the last stages of the election campaign in Firozabad.

While the SP, which has fielded Mulayam Singh Yadav’s daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav, was jittery after Rahul Gandhi’s massive rally in support of the Congress candidate Raj Babbar last week, the RLD has been facing an uncertain future since NDA’s defeat in the Lok Sabha election in May. At one stage, the RLD had made overtures to the Congress, but the Congress showed little interest in any tie-up with local parties.

Therefore, joining hands with Mulayam and Kalyan Singh was the only option available to the RLD to stay relevant in state politics. The party lost no time in announcing support for Dimple Yadav, although its previous ally BJP has fielded a candidate in Firozabad.

Like Kalyan, Ajit too has a limited support base in western UP. If Kalyan has little support outside his Lodha community, Ajit has little following among the non-Jats. By joining hands with Mulayam, they can hope to emerge as the third front in UP politics, where the Congress seems to have become the main challenger of the ruling BSP in the run up to the 2012 Assembly elections.

Ajit Singh’s son Jayant Choudhari said: “It is premature to say anything about the future of my party’s alliance with the SP. Our immediate priority is to ensure the defeat of the BSP candidate in the Firozabad Lok Sabha by-election.” Jayant refused to see his party’s decision to join hands with the Mulayam-Kalyan combine as the consolidation of “anti-Congressism”.

“You can describe it as a pro-farmer approach,” he said.

According to RLD spokespe-rson Anil Dubey, the party’s decision to support the candidature of SP candidate, Dimple Yadav, was the result of “better political understanding between two young leaders,” — Akhilesh Yadav and Jayant Choudhari.