NEW DELHI, 8 March — The Union Cabinet recommended yesterday imposition of central rule in Uttar Pradesh, as no political party had been able to form a government.

Cabinet spokesman Pramod Mahajan told reporters the Cabinet decided to recommend central rule in the state after considering a report from Governor V.K. Shastri.

Shastri told President K.R. Narayanan late on Wednesday that central rule should be imposed as no single political party or coalition could provide a stable government in the country’s most populous state. The move must be approved by both houses of Parliament within 60 days.

Shastri made the recommendation after elections last month in which the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which heads the ruling coalition government at the center, lost control of the state.

The BJP and its allies won 107 seats while the Samajwadi Party emerged as the single largest party with 147 seats in the 404-member assembly. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) won 98 seats and the Congress party 25. The rest were won by smaller parties and independents.

According to a governor’s house source, “the governor invited each of the major political parties for discussion. None could come up with a substantive support strength, nor did any party seem willing to strike an alliance with any other to forge a majority, following which he was left with no option but to recommend president’s rule.”

In case president’s rule is imposed, the newly elected assembly would remain under suspended animation in a striking repeat of 1996, when then Governor Romesh Bhandari took a similar stand following a fractious electoral verdict. While the BJP, which headed the outgoing government, found nothing wrong with Shastri’s recommendation, the Samajwadi Party is sore. The Congress party has preferred to maintain silence.

BJP state chief Kalraj Misra and Chief Minister Rajnath Singh said that under the given circumstances, the governor had no choice but to favor president’s rule.

But Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav, who was hoping to become chief minister again, was left fuming.

“The governor has displayed his partisan attitude by not giving us an opportunity to form the government,” he alleged. “Precedents and constitutional propriety demanded that, by virtue of being the single largest party, we should have been invited to form the government and we had already made it clear that we would prove our majority on the floor of the house.”

While the BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) had told the governor in no uncertain terms that they would have nothing to do with the Samajwadi Party, the Congress has remained ambivalent.

“Currently we are deeply engrossed with the national tragedy that has struck Gujarat, therefore we have not been able to give thought to the formation of a government in Uttar Pradesh,” state Congress chief Shree Prakash Jaiswal had said after meeting the governor.

On the morning of March 6, the day Jaiswal said the party might announce its stand, he and Congress Legislature Party (CLP) leader Pramod Tiwari headed for the curfew-bound areas of Aligarh town, where a communal clash had taken place in the aftermath of the Gujarat violence.

They were immediately arrested for violating the curfew. After waiting till Wednesday evening for a possible indication of support for Mulayam from the Congress, Shastri decided to recommend president’s rule.