Mayawati withdraws support to UPA Government

New Delhi, June 21 : Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati today announced the withdrawal of her party's support to the Congress-led UPA Government, saying the Centre had meted out a step-motherly treatment to her one-year-old government.

The BSP has 17 MPs in the Lok Sabha. But the withdrawal of support won't affect the Centre as it has sufficient numbers to run the government.

Addressing press persons in the Capital this afternoon, Mayawati also held the Congress responsible for the ongoing upward graph of inflation.

Mayawati told reporters that she had sent the letter of withdrawal of support to President Pratibha Patil, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Relations between the Congress and the BSP turned sour more than three months back when Congress General Secretary and Lok Sabha MP from Amethi, Rahul Gandhi tried to score a point by visiting a Dalit family in Aminabad village in Etawah district whose five members were gunned down. But, after Rahul's planned visit was reported in the media, Mayawati made a hurried visit to the grieved family 12 hours in advance and also announced compensation. The point-scoring game between the two parties was widely reported in the media.

Rahul's visit to the Dalit family was to coincide with the 74th birth anniversary celebration of BSP founder Kanshi Ram, in whose memory several programmes were lined up across the state.

Mayawati took over the reins in Uttar Pradesh on May 13, 2007, after her party emerged victorious getting simple majority in the Assembly. The BSP supremo's social engineering formula of engaging all the castes proved successful, belying all exit poll results. It was after more than 20 years when a single party had formed the government in Lucknow.

ANI