Though the Samajwadi Party takes utmost care not to be seen along with the BJP, expelled party leader Amar Singh has revealed that SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav had become the chief minister of UP third time with the “active” support of the saffron party.
Mr Amar Singh has revealed that he had lobbied with the late BJP leaders, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat and Pramod Mahajan, to impress upon the then Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to ask the then UP governor, Vishnu Kant Shastri, to call Mr Yadav to form the government in 2003.
The UP Assembly elections in 2003 had given a fractured verdict.
Mr Amar Singh, while writing in his blog, has stated that majority of the BJP MLAs wanted Mr Vajpayee to impose the President’s Rule in the state. “However, I lobbied with late BJP leaders Pramod Mahajan and Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to convince Mr Vajpayee to give a chance to Mr Yadav. Following the efforts, Mr Yadav was given one day’s time to prove his majority in the Assembly. That one day later turned into three-and-a-half years of Mr Yadav’s tenure as the UP chief minister with the support various groups,” Mr Amar Singh has revealed.
Another former SP leader, who was close to Mr Yadav and had left the party during the 2008 trust vote in Lok Sabha on Indo-US nuclear deal, told this newspaper that Mr Yadav had proved majority in the Assembly with the active support of the Speaker, Keshri Nath Tripathi, who was the nominee of the BJP. “Mulayam’s brother, Shivpal Singh Yadav, had engineered a series of defection from the ranks of the BSP. To ensure that the anti-defection law did not come in the way, the Speaker had formalised the defection though the BSP MLAs had defected in groups and had clubbed them all into one group,” said the former SP leader.
While Mr Yadav had formed the government with “behind the door” support of the BJP, he had in his Cabinet even former BJP leader, Kalyan Singh’s son, Rajbir Singh, as a minister. Mr Yadav recently parted ways with Mr Kalyan Singh in the effort to win back the Muslim support in the state after the party lost heavily in the last year’s Lok Sabha elections.
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Mulayam hits out at Centre
AGE CORRESPONDENT
Kolkata
May 21: SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav lashed out at the Centre on Friday claiming that it did not have the “power” to tackle the Chinese aggression along the Indian border. He said China was flexing its muscle due to the Centre’s soft stand. “The government does not have the power to protect the country’s border from the Chinese manoeuvres.”