LUCKNOW, 29 August 2003 — The main opposition Congress party made inroads yesterday in India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh by supporting a new socialist-led government after a coalition that included India’s ruling Hindu nationalists collapsed.
The governor of the northern state, which with more than 166 million people is considered a barometer of Indian national politics, invited former Defense Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav, who heads the Samajwadi (Socialist) party, to form a new government.
Congress is supporting Yadav and “is expected to get ministerial berths in the new government,” said a Samajwadi party official. With Uttar Pradesh, Congress will hold power in 15 of India’s 28 states. The BJP, despite holding together a federal coalition since 1998, has been steadily losing ground at the provincial level, and now rules only three states.
Five states are to hold assembly elections in November ahead of parliamentary elections that must be held by October 2004 but could be called early.
The Uttar Pradesh political crisis was triggered Monday when Mayawati offered to quit as chief minister over aborted plans for a shopping mall near India’s famous 17th century Taj Mahal white marble mausoleum.
The move angered Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s BJP party, which was in a coalition in Uttar Pradesh with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP, People’s Social Party) and said it had not been consulted.
The BJP withdrew its support, forcing Mayawati to step down Tuesday.
Yadav, 63, was defense minister from 1996 to 1998 in a coalition government that did not include Congress or the BJP. He served as Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister from 1993 to 1995, when one of his projects was replacing English with Hindi as the language of administration.
A staunch secularist, Yadav has refused any coalition with the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, a hotbed of Hindu revivalism where activists are campaigning to build a temple over the ruins of a mosque in Ayodhya.
Yadav was invited to form government at a meeting yesterday with Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri, New Delhi’s representative in the state.
“Yadav assured the government that he can prove his majority on the floor of the house,” said an Uttar Pradesh state secretariat spokesman.
Yadav’s Samajwadi party is the largest in the 403-member state legislature, with 146 legislators. He is counting on support from at least 190 lawmakers, including the 16 Congress legislators and 13 breakaway members of Mayawati’s BSP.
