LUCKNOW, Sept 28: Bahujan Samaj Party leaders Kanshi Ram and Mayawati's acerbic remarks on the Kalyan Singh Government in the past one week have deepened the schism between the coalition partners.The BSP apparently does not want to carry the coalition beyond the six months of BJP's rule, but its first target seems to be Chief Minister Kalyan Singh whose actions have been affecting its vote-bank.Kalyan's very first move of issuing an order to prevent misuse of the Prevention of Atrocities on SC/ST Act and his Ayodhya visit has provided them with enough ammunition to keep firing at BJP leaders for the next six months.Kanshi Ram's nod to BSP minister Buniyad Hussain Ansari's proposed Ayodhya visit to offer namaaz at the site of the Babri mosque and the decision to launch a nation-wide agitation on the SC/ST Act has left little space to the BJP for manoeuvring.Posters screaming ``Expose anti-Dalit psyche of BJP'', to be put up all over the country as part of the BSP's campaign on the SC/ST Act, sums up the BSP's intentions. ``We too are against misuse of the Act. But the BJP is against its use altogether,'' Kanshi Ram said here on Friday, candidly admitting that he would have jettisoned the BJP Government over the issue but for the fear of another spell of President's Rule.With a UF Government at the Centre, in which the Samajwadi Party is a key constituent, President's Rule in UP means an indirect rule of SP Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, the bete noire of BSP leaders. ``We will not topple the BJP Government at the moment but will keep fighting within the coalition,'' Mayawati said.Kanshi Ram has apparently based his strategy on the hypothesis that the UF Government is not expected to last for more than six months and his party could go it alone in the parliamentary polls which might coincide with Assembly elections in the State.This is why he has attempted to subtly rake up the Babri Masjid issue to keep his minority vote-bank in good humour. If Kanshi Ram is trying to whip up passions on the issue despite a Supreme Court order of January 1993 for status quo in Ayodhya - meaning that namaaz cannot be offered at the site of the Babri mosque - it is only to wean away Muslims from the Samajwadi Party in view of the next elections.The BSP's aim appears to be to not only to increase its support base but also to enhance its political stock and thereby its bargaining power for future alliances, both pre and post-poll ones.The BJP on the other hand hopes to keep the BSP on its right side, if only for electoral gains, as part of its pan-Hindu ideology. But Chief Minister Kalyan Singh has different ideas. Sources close to Kalyan Singh claim that he believes in a BJP revival in U.P. on its own steam and not on the BSP's crutches.His actions like issuing a GO to check misuse of the SC/ST Act, his Ayodhya visit and dealing with corruption in the bureaucracy sternly have pleased the BJP supporters who have been disenchanted over the party's silence on Mayawati's blatant Ambedkarisation of the State during the past six months.Kalyan, meanwhile, has been doing a tightrope walk by pursuing his agenda with single-minded devotion to consolidate the BJP vote-bank without reacting to the BSP's rhetoric over his actions.
