Rashtriya Loktantrik Party leader Hanuman Beniwal has set up a third front with Chandrashekhar Azad’s Aaj Samaj Party (ASP) for the Rajasthan polls. The alliance has rendered the contest triangular in many seats. He spoke to Vinod Sharma in the middle of a boisterous public meeting at Luni where his party has a candidate. Excerpts:

You won just three assembly seats in 2018. This time you’re contesting 126 in alliance with the Dalit centric ASP. What’s your projection?

People will support us to the hilt. We’ll have big numbers to show. Our alliance is in a fighting position in over 100 seats. Rajasthan will witness a big change. People are fed up with the Congress and the BJP. We are the third alternative they’re seeking. I played the role of opposition here for fifteen years. In Parliament I left the BJP’s side on the farm laws, raised voice against contractual hiring of jawans (agniveers) in the army, demanded free power, toll-free travel for people and employment for the youth in the state.

Which side will you go in a hung assembly?

Others will come to us, we won’t go to anyone. Our first aim is to form a government of our own. Or else we’d form a government with others.

With which party will you go? The BJP or the Congress?

On that we’d take a call as per the demands of the political situation.

You had a bitter war of words with the Congress’s Divya Maderna but did not field a candidate against her in Osian…

The candidate I wanted for Osian did not come to us. That’s why we aren’t in the contest there like in many other seats. The Congress and the BJP have underhand tactics to limit our challenge. That’s why we are only in 126/200 seats.

After 2018, the Congress won many by-elections where your party was in the contest. That makes people believe you have a secret pact with Ashok Gehlot.

People always talk. Some also say that I’m a Narendra Modi prop. If I were with Gehlot I wouldn’t have ensured the defeat of his son in the Jodhpur Lok Sabha seat in 2019. Vaibhav Gehlot lost because of me, not Gajendra Shekhawat (the BJP candidate who won).