Fuelling speculation that she was now ready to face the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, Chief Minister Mayawati today effected a split in the 23-member Congress Legislature Party (CLP), securing the support of seven of its members and an unattached MLA who swiftly formed a separate Akhil Bharatiya Congress. Speaker Kesari Nath Tripathi took nearly four hours, studying different verdicts of the Supreme Court, before according recognition to the new outfit. This drew expected howls from the Congress with Ambika Soni, political advisor to party president Sonia Gandhi, announcing in New Delhi that it was going to challenge the Speaker’s decision in court. ‘‘One of the MLAs, Akhilesh Singh, is no longer a member of the Congress. So it does not fulfil the criterion of eight members effecting a split,’’ Soni said, accusing the Mayawati government of ‘‘making repeated attempts to allure our MLAs, through material gains or threats. This carrot and stick policy has been going on for long.’’ In Lucknow, CLP leader Pramod Tiwari said they would not only take the matter to court but also bring a no-confidence motion against the Speaker when the House meets next. ‘‘Our legislators were held captive in the Speaker’s chamber for five hours and were threatened and coaxed to support Mayawati,’’ alleged an angry Tiwari who chanted slogans against the Speaker as he moved away from the chamber. But Akhilesh Pratap Singh from Rae Bareli who led the breakaway group — the others who switched loyalty are Kameshwar Upadhyaya (Deoria), Shyam Narain Tiwari (Maharajganj), Kazim Ali (Rampur, son of Congress MP Noor Bano), Virendra Singh Bundela (Lalitpur), Dinesh Singh (Siddharthnagar), Vinod Kumar Singh Yadav (Etawah) and Rajpal Tyagi (Ghaziabad) — denied any pressure to split. ‘‘We are extending support to the Mayawati government for the state’s development and stability. More from the Congress will join us because they are feeling suffocated.’’ Akhilesh was expelled from the Congress last August and the Speaker agreed to treat him as an unattached member. Only seven of the 23 Congress MLAs reached the Speaker’s chamber where Tripathi later added Akhilesh to the list of defectors. ‘‘The Supreme Court had clearly stated in the case of G.Vishwanathan versus Honourable Speaker that there was no provision for an unattached member in the Tenth Schedule. If there is any split, the unattached member will be treated as a member of the party on the symbol of which he or she won the election. Keeping this in mind, I recognised the Akhil Bharatiya Congress as a separate outfit,’’ he said. ‘‘All the eight were physically present before me and verbally conveyed their wish to leave the party.’’ This is the second time the Congress has faced a split in UP. In 1997, some 20 members led by Naresh Agarwal broke away and pledged support to the then Kalyan Singh government. Incidentally, some of those who split today were brought to New Delhi last month for a meeting with Sonia Gandhi. The party leadership believed it had assuaged the disgruntled MLAs, partly explaining the stunned looks at the AICC headquarters as news of the split filtered in. While senior leaders were seeking legal opinion on the issue, a letter written by the MLAs to Tripathi gives reasons for their quitting. In the letter, it’s stated that the party had ‘‘strayed from its path of striving for the interests of Dalits, backward classes, minorities, farmers and labourers. It has been reduced to a party of the wealthy.’’
