BJP meet to review ties with Mayawati

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will hold a top level meeting here today to review its existing ties with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh.

According to party sources, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi will join party chief M. Venkaiah Naidu, BJP general secretaries Pramod Mahajan, Rajnath Singh and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and state unit leaders of the party to discuss afresh its alliance with the BSP.

The meeting has assumed significance in light of growing resentment within the BJP ranks after Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati slapped over 100 FIRs against the rival Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav for misuse of the Chief Minister's Discretionary Fund (CMDF) about a decade back.

The controversy that has followed has come as a big embarrassment for the BJP since it risks being seen as siding with those following politics of vendetta.

Although the BJP state unit has always been opposed to continuing in the coalition government, their cause was strengthened when both Mahajan and Rajnath Singh joined those criticising Mayawati government's vendetta politics.

The central leadership of the party have been insisting on continuing in the alliance on the basis of their assertion that the party may need the BSP support in Madhya Pradesh in quest to wrest power from the rival Congress party.

The party leadership, however, will have to rethink their stand in view of Madhya Pradesh BJP president Kailash Joshi's assertion that the party will have no ties with any other party since the contest will be confined between the BJP and the Congress party and no third party may have any decisive role to play.

Even Uma Bharti who stepped down as a federal cabinet minister recently to head the BJP campaign in Madhya Pradesh as well as Federal Law Minister Arun Jaitley, who has been made in-charge of the party in the state, are opposed to any tie-up with the BSP in Madhya Pradesh, saying it will prove to be more a liability than asset.

Controversy surrounding misuse of CMDF by Yadav and senior Congress party leader Motilal Vora when he was the Uttar Pradesh governor, saw many allies of the BJP in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) joining the opposition in condemning Mayawati's action and demanding an end to politics of revenge.

Although the BJP insiders are refusing to guess what may come out of today's meeting, they said all its options were open.

Withdrawal of support to Mayawati may automatically lead to a snap poll in the state considering no government can be formed without BJP support given the hung nature of the state assembly.

It is the first time Vajpayee will be directly associated in discussing BJP-BSP ties as in the past the job was left for Advani and Naidu to tackle.