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Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Desperate to prevent defections by her newly elected legislators, Bahujan Samaj Party leader and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has hurriedly summoned all her 98 MLAs to join her in New Delhi, where she has been camping ever since the declaration of the state assembly results on February 24.
While sources close to Mayawati described the move as simply to hold a meeting of the newly elected legislators in Delhi on Thursday, political observers see it as just another way to keep her flock together.
The SP and its allies have bagged 147 seats, while the BJP and allies have 107 seats.
Past experience has shown that BSP legislators were among the most vulnerable lot.
And this time, as the rumour goes, bulk of the party nominees for the recently concluded assembly polls had 'purchased' tickets, and seem to be softest targets for horse-trading.
"Behenji (referring to Mayawati) knows that the Samajwadi Party is sitting like a hawk to pounce on our partymen; but we are confident that none will fall in that party or any other party's trap," a source close to the BSP leader said.
In 1996, as many as 19 of the BSP MLAs were weaned away by Rajnath Singh, who was then state BJP president and was working towards cobbling up a majority for Kalyan Singh.
The BSP leader was understood to have therefore summoned all her legislators to Delhi.
It is said that after the proposed meeting of the newly elected legislators, she would pack them off to a 'safe' destination in Punjab, where the Kanshi Ram had made arrangements for their stay.
They are likely to return to Lucknow only after things settle down.
Immediately after the hung verdict of the 1996 state assembly election, Mayawati had got all her MLAs locked up inside her party office for a number of days and no one including the media was allowed inside.
However, she could not save the exodus when BJP threw the bait six months later.
Meanwhile, she has still not given up on the possibility of BJP supporting her government.
BSP sources claimed that secret negotiations were still on and that BJP was trying to drive Mayawati against the wall so that she could, for a change, settle on BJP's terms.
The state BJP leadership, however, is divided on the issue of an alliance. While the Rajnath Singh-led BJP lobby is not willing to settle for anything other than Mayawati joining the central Cabinet and leaving the prized office in Lucknow for the BJP, Kalraj Misra, the state BJP president and his compatriots are willing to accept deputy chief ministership under a government led by Mayawati.
Singh had managed to convince the central leadership that if Mayawati continued to insist on the chief ministership, then it would be better for the BJP to sit in the opposition.
Mayawati is in no position to form the government without BJP's support because of her sworn personal enmity with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.
"I cannot forget how he unleashed violence on me and my partymen when wer withdrew support to his government in 1995; I will never pardon Mulayam for that and the question of any rapproachment with him does not arise," she said.
