Maya banks on Sonia and Speaker

With 13 BJP legislators already openly opposed to Mayawati and more expected to join them, the only way she can turn the tide is to get Tripathi to start disqualifying and unseating them under the Anti-defection Act.

She hopes that once Tripathi, rich with the Maharashtra precedent, does so, the more die-hard among the BJP dissidents will be out of the way—reducing the strength of the House—and the rest would get tamed. Thereafter, Mayawati can prove her majority in the assembly.

The BJP leadership is yet to make up its mind to pursue this course. Central party general secretary Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said here that the rebels ‘‘may be disqualified and unseated from the assembly.’’

Meanwhile, in a classic example of paying back in the same coin, Gandhi is tanatalising Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav with her 25 MLAs. Just as he kept her away from the prime ministership, Gandhi is keeping the chief ministership out of his reach.

With his 142 MLAs, Yadav would attract the requisite support in the 403-member House the moment the Congress pledges its support to him. This, according to Congress sources, would not happen and the Congress would keep Yadav on the wait.

The BJP, fighting a losing battle to protect its herd, is at a sea to put its house in order. Naqvi was one moment aggressive to the extreme, and another, desperate and helpless. He said ‘‘power-brokers, money-bags and blackmarketeers’’ are ‘‘trying to grab power,’’ but they would not succeed.

This done, he sought to scare the rebels by hinting at an assembly dissolution. ‘‘The Samajwadi Party is pushing the state towards a mid-term poll,’’ he added.

Far from it, Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav was working overtime to replace Mayawati. He took two initiatives. One, in order to pre-empt any move by the Chief Minister to seek an assembly dissolution, his general secretary Amar Singh he met Governor Vishnukant Shastri and staked a claim to form an alternative government, arguing that she had lost the majority support in the House.

He claimed having the support of 204 MLAs in the 403-member House. Two, he rushed to Patna to persuade Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav to use his influence over Sonia Gandhi to get her support to oust Mayawati and form an alternative govt.

Shastri, seeing that he may be soon required to act, began consultations with legal experts. The two courses left to him are to either convene the assembly and ask Mayawati to prove her majority or dissolve the House. In the first case, he may stay out of the controversy and the Speaker can bail out Mayawati by unseating BJP rebels.

‘‘The right place for the count of votes is the House and the Governor should immediately convene a special session of the House to determine that who enjoyed the majority. This has happened with Mulayam Singh twice when he lost and now the Governor should do the same so that SP can prove its majority at the right forum,’’ Amar Singh said.

However, he sidestepped the fact that the SP had claimed the support of 204 MLAs, including 37 BJP and allies, and declined to divulge their names. ‘‘The SP’s list has an imaginary figure,’’ said state BJP chief Vinay Katiyar.