The RLD reportedly wanted at least 40 seats in Grand Alliance, Congress offered no more than 20.
Ticket seekers are still milling around the Vasant Kunj farmhouse where Uttar Pradesh politician Ajit Singh and his son Jayant Chaudhury live in Delhi. In only 23 days, the first two phases of the UP elections - in areas where Mr Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal or RLD has influence - will be wrapped up, but the party is still handing out ticket and no one is quite sure how many candidates it will field. Not even the two top bosses.
A Bihar-style Grand Alliance with the Samajwadi Party and Congress did not happen, but the RLD, which had won only nine of the 40 seats it contested in 2012, expects to perform much better this time; it has already announced names for 71 seats and could add more if it finds good candidates. The RLD reportedly wanted at least 40 seats in the Grand Alliance, the Congress offered no more than 20.
The party is clear that it will not partner with the BJP post the elections as it has earlier done. "This is not the BJP of Vajpayee. I am quite clear after the Muzaffarnagar riots that we will not go with them,'' said Jayant Chaudhary, who detects an "anti-BJP sentiment" among the powerful Jat community in UP because they have not been granted reservation in government jobs and colleges that they have been demanding for several years. The RLD draws its major support from Jats and battles the BJP for that vote in UP.
The RLD has played crucial supporting roles in the past, like supporting Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Ghaziabad in the 2009 national election, and has always seen itself as a potential kingmaker in UP.
"If the BJP falls short, BSP will go with them," Jayant Chaudhury predicted. Does that mean the RLD could support the SP-Congress to form government if needed? "Politics is always the art of the possible," Mr Chaudhury said, adding, "We may not be a big party but we are a significant party. What we have achieved is that we have kept our cadres together and so we are hopeful."
Mr Chaudhury had featured on early posters with Akhilesh Yadav and his wife Dimple and the Congress' Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi while talks on the Grand Alliance were still on. Mr Chaudhury said the RLD was "squeezed" out in the final negotiations. "It was Ajit Singhji who first brought up the idea of the alliance when there was rift in the Samajwadi Party family. He was the one who said there has to be a secular alliance fighting together. I don't know what happened, but we felt there was a lack of courtesy,'' he said.
Refusing to share details, Mr Chaudhury said he had met Priyanka Gandhi and had also spoken to Akhilesh Yadav before the deal fell through and the Samajwadi Party said they were not in any negotiations with the RLD.