Giving the all-clear to the year-old Bahujan Samaj Party-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government in Uttar Pradesh, Governor Vishnukant Shastri said in Lucknow on Tuesday, June 10, that he was unconvinced by the opposition's claim that the government had been reduced to a minority.
Through a press release issued late in the evening, Shastri made it clear that there was no threat to the government. "No such evidence or detail has been put up by the opposition to prima facie satisfy me that the BSP-BJP government does not enjoy the majority in the UP state assembly," he said.
The two-page communique went into the entire sequence of events that began with Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh's decision to pull out of the ruling coalition on May 30 and referred to the memorandum submitted by a combined opposition, as also the subsequent demand by state Congress chief Jagdambika Pal, that Mayawati's government be dismissed for having lost its majority.
"BJP state president Vinay Katiyar, however, maintained that the ruling coalition remains unaffected by the withdrawal of RLD support as it continues to enjoy the support of 212 MLAs in the 403-member UP House," the statement said.
"The leader of the BJP in the state assembly, Lalji Tandon, also met me to confirm that none of their party MLAs are with the opposition; he also demanded that if the opposition claims the support of some BJP MLAs, it must submit their names, which also the opposition failed to do," he pointed out.
The governor's statement comes on the eve of Mayawati's return from her 16-day-long tour of four countries, including the United States. The chief minister returns on Wednesday.
