Mulayam to seek trust vote amidst Oppn boycott

Lucknow, Feb 25: Creating a record of sorts in Indian legislative history, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav is all set to seek a trust vote in the Assembly tomorrow amid a threat of boycott by the opposition parties and en masse resignation of the BSP MLAs.

It will be for the first time that a majority government will seek confidence vote on simultaneous sittings of the House. The Samajwadi Party government had gone for the trust vote on January 25 on the last sitting day of the present session and it will do so again tomorrow.

The confidence vote of the government might be the last major engagement of the Assembly before the seven-phase state polls slated between April and May.

Though there is no demand for the confidence vote, the government is set to do it to prove its majority after the Supreme court verdict disqualifying 13 MLAs of the BSP's splinter group.

The government is also slated to bring a finance bill in the House tomorrow to hike the pension of ex-legislators.

Although BSP's action has taken out the fizz to some extent of the proposed Samajwadi Party (SP) government trust vote and it is likely that BJP, Congress and RLD might follow suit before the Assembly sitting, the ruling party has decided to go ahead with the motion at any cost.

BJP, the main opposition party has hinted at opposing the government in the House claiming that running away from the issue would only help the government to fulfill its illegal desire.

SP and BJP have convened their legislature party meetings today to discuss the issue, while Congress MLAs will sit tomorrow morning.

Congress and Jan Morcha led by former prime minister V P Singh have announced to 'gherao' the Assembly tomorrow to protest the ''illegal continuation'' of the SP government.

Jan Morcha leader and cinestar Raj Babbar said they will not allow the SP MLAs to enter the Assembly premises.

SP leader and state revenue minister Ambika Choudhury claimed the Opposition was afraid to face the Assembly. ''The BSP move to resign en masse will not at all affect the sitting of the House.'' The Minister said it should be queried if Mayawati had merely mentioned about her party MLAs' resignation or the legislators were actually serious about it.

On the other hand, the main opposition termed the resignation of BSP MLAs as a 'walkover' to the Mulayam government.

''There is no way the Mulayam government could have proved its majority on the Floor of the House on February 26, but after the resignation of 67 BSP members, now the ball is in the government's court,'' BJP legislature party leader Lalji Tandon said.

''BSP move is detrimental to the opposition's unity against SP in the assembly, thus giving the latter a 'walkover' on the confidence vote.''

BJP has convened an emergency legislature party meeting tomorrow to discuss the emergent political situation. ''We will decide in the meeting if BJP would boycott proceedings of the House on February 26 and abstain from voting,'' he informed. Asked if the party would follow suit and direct resignation of its members, Mr Tandon quipped BJP would make an independent assessment of the situation.

Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) legislature party leader Kokab Hamid said his party MLAs would boycott proceedings of the House.

The party has 15 MLAs in the Assembly and had recently withdrawn support from the Mulayam government.

Congress legislature party leader Pramod Tiwari, on the other hand, said the party MLAs will decide the strategy tomorrow morning, keeping all options open till then.

Earlier, in a turn of events, BSP supremo Mayawati announced the resignation of all party legislators along with 11 MLAs of other parties, including 5 of BJP, 4 of SP and 2 Independents.

Ms Mayawati said the state government was ''unconstitutional'' and as the term of the present Assembly ends tomorrow, there was no moral for the government to continue.

She also alleged speaker Mata Prasad Pandey was 'biased' and acting like a ''member of the ruling party''.

''The term of the present 14th assembly expires on February 25, as the Election Commission had notified the new assembly on the date in 2002,'' she noted.

She maintained the Speaker had also failed to implement the Supreme Court verdict disqualifying 13 members of the Loktantrik Bahujan Dal (LBD).

''Till date, the Speaker has not released the fresh list of the Assembly and considered the fate of the remaining 24 MLAs.'' This will be the second time that the MLAs are resigning en masse with SP doing the same in September 2001 when BJP's Rajnath Singh was the Chief Minister.

They had demanded that the Assembly poll be held in October 2001, while the BJP claimed that as per the first sitting of the house, the UP election was due in February 2002.

Principal Secretary (Assembly) A N Mittal said his secretariat had not received the resignation letters of any MLA today.

Meanwhile, Governor T V Rajeswar has written a letter to Chief Minister saying there is no need to accept the resignation of the seven ministers, who had been disqualified by the apex court.

It is learnt that Raj Bhawan wrote, ''there is no point accepting resignation letter of seven ministers, since they stand disqualified from Augut 27, 2003 as per the SC order.'' The letter said there is also constitutional provision rendering needless the acceptance of resignations of disqualfied legislators.

Seven ministers, Rajendra Singh Rana, Shailendra Yadav, Yogesh Pratap Singh, Jai Prakash Yadav, Virendra Singh Bundela, Rajpal Tyagi and Dinesh Singh, had resigned from the Mulayam Singh Yadav Ministry on February 15.

UNI