BSP supremo and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati is exploring legal options to bar her party’s six legislators, who merged with ruling Congress in Rajasthan, from casting votes in the contingency if Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is compelled to take floor test to prove majority in the backdrop of Sachin Pilot-led revolt.
The BSP is considering moving the Supreme Court in the matter if its legal consultants build a viable case keeping in mind the Constitutional law.
Should the BSP move the top court, another conundrum would be injected in the Rajasthan’s present political potboiler.
Sources said Team Sachin Pilot was in touch with the BSP.
Gehlot weaned away all the six BSP MLAs in the present Assembly and merged them with the Congress. This happened despite BSP’s official support to the Congress government.
A senior national functionary of the BSP told The Tribune that the party leadership had taken a serious view of the Congress staging an “uncalled for coup”, not least against a party which was extending support to it in all earnestness to keep the BJP at bay.
“The party is looking into the feasibility of approaching the judiciary to prohibit the defector MLAs from taking part in voting in a floor test,” said the leader.
The BSP had petitioned to the Election Commission and the Speaker of Rajasthan Assembly to bar them from taking part in the recent Rajya Sabha elections. But the case remained in limbo due to technical knots and legal wrangles.
Mayawati is credited with the view that Congress back-stabbed the BSP to shore up its numbers in the Assembly to ward off a challenge like the one thrown by Pilot.
“Hence, the BSP would like to hit out at the Congress, should there be legal scope for it,” said the BSP leader.
The BSP leadership is of the firm view that even if the government in Rajasthan survives the present scare, another one would be soon coming given the fluid political situation and tenuous hold the Congress has in the numbers’ game.
A section in the BSP feels that there are glitches in the way the MLAs were merged with the Congress in a hurry. They are of the view that the MLAs should have formed a political party after they broke with the BSP and then merge with the Congress.
“Only an organisation can technically merge with another organisation. MLAs could only join the Congress in individual capacity, which is in contravention of the anti-defection law,” said a BSP leader.
Rajasthan BSP president Bhagwan Singh said that the Congress government led by Gehlot had pulled off a similar “trick” against his MLAs in 2008.
Singh, who also was the president then, said that his party had similarly six MLAs and the BSP was supporting the government then, too.
“One can be charitable enough to attribute the shenanigans of the Congress in Rajasthan against BSP to a freak chance and coincidence in 2008. But the second similar act conforms to a devious pattern, and a rapacious habit,” Singh said.
He added that Congress now crying hoarse of poaching of its MLAs in Rajasthan rings hollow in the backdrop of what it had been doing with BSP MLAs.
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