UP polls: Jayant to join Akhilesh, Mamata for joint poll rally in Varanasi on March 3

RLD chief Jayant Chaudhary will be joining Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee for a joint poll rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi on Thursday. The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), which is fighting the UP assembly elections in tie-up with Yadav’s SP and is its major ally for western region of the state, made the announcement on social media Wednesday.

The joint rally will be held in Airhe village in Harhua block of Varanasi 12 pm onwards, the RLD said.

Varanasi, the parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, goes to polls on March 7 during the seventh and last phase of assembly polls in UP.

Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress supremo, had visited UP earlier on February 7-8 to hold a joint press conference with Yadav in Lucknow where she predicted SP’s victory against the BJP, like her party had done in West Bengal state polls last year.

Banerjee had tweaked her party’s poll anthem of “khela hobe’ to ‘Khela Hoga’ (the game is on) and stressed “if Bengal can do it (defeat BJP), so can Uttar Pradesh”.

Results of the seven-phase UP assembly polls will be declared on March 10.