BSP ready to bid highest for Samajwadi Party MPs

New Delhi: The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has intensified efforts to engineer a split in its arch rival, the Samajwadi Party, ahead of the crucial trust vote in parliament.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, who is also national president of the BSP and ostensibly the richest politician in the country, has apparently loosened her purse strings to lure Samajwadi Party lawmakers.

There are suggestions that the BSP is out to match the Congress party, which heads the troubled coalition government at the Centre, with offers of anywhere between Rs250-300 million (Dh21.4-25.7 million) to sway each lawmaker.

The survival of the ruling coalition has come to hinge on independents and smaller parties.

The political equations changed at the Centre when the BSP withdrew the support of its 17 lawmakers to the federal government, followed by the Left parties, triggering a crisis.

Choice of constituencies

The Samajwadi Party, which has 39 lawmakers, however, moved in swiftly to extend support to the government with an eye on marginalising the BSP which ousted it from power in Uttar Pradesh last year.

The BSP has been in touch with several Samajwadi Party lawmakers for some time now and expects at least 10 of them to switch allegiances any time. They are being offered either money or the promise of nominations from the constituency of their choice.

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav yesterday alleged the state government was, besides money, promising to dilute cases against lawmakers of his party.

While the BSP rejected allegations of horse-trading as baseless and a bundle of lies, at least one of its lawmakers, Akbar Ahmad Dumpy, was yesterday said to have called on imprisoned Samajwadi Party lawmaker Afzal Ansari at Ghazipur prison.