Maya sails through with Rajnath rowing

The discussion on the confidence motion continued for more than seven hours.

Mayawati had, while staking claim to forming a coalition Government on April 29, submitted a list of 211 MLAs supporting the coalition. Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri had at the time asked her to prove her majority on the floor of the House within three weeks of her May 3 swearing-in.

The House of 403 members has an effective strength of 398. Four seats are vacant and the Speaker is not entitled to vote. The BSP has 97 members, BJP 88, RLD14, JD-U 2 and LCP 2.

Moving the motion, the Chief Minister said that the BJP and her party had come forward to form the government only after the largest single party, the Samajwadi Party, failed to mobilise the support of enough MLAs to form a government even in the two months’ time since.

‘‘It was our duty to prevent a fresh poll, putting an additional burden of more than Rs 500 crores on the public exchequer, by providing a popular government to the people’’ she said.

Acknowledging that her party and the BJP had different thoughts, she said they’d formed the government in the people’s interests.

‘‘Whenever the BJP helps the SP to win the elections or form the government it becomes a secular party and the day it joins hands with the BSP it turns communal,’’ she said.

She also charged the SP with attempting to engineer the defection of Muslim MLAs from her party by telling them the BJP-BSP coalition government would lead to the Muslim community feeling insecure and a Gujarat-type situation being repeated here also.

The House witnessed an uproar when SP member Azam Khan alleged that the BSP hadjoined hands with the party that had demolished the Babri Masjid and that BSP chief Kanshi Ram had once said that a lavatory should be built where the mosque stood.

By joining hands with the BJP to form a government, he said, the BSP had not only ditched the Muslim MLAs but also the electorate of their respective constituencies.

Former chief minister Rajnath Singh, who had opposed the tie-up with the BSP, today defended it more strongly than even Mayawati.

Rajnath replied, point by point, to every allegation made by the Opposition.

The BJP-BSP coalition, the former chief minister said, was that of the ‘‘Rashtriya chetna and Dalit chetna’’, which was the dream of Mahatma Gandhi.

Admitting that the BJP had formed the coalition government with the BSP under compulsion, he said that the Government would not only run for five years but also deliver. It was sensitive to the problems of farmers, the poor, labour and unemployed, he said.

In his speech, Kalyan Singh cautioned Mayawati against the BJP. The Government would not last long, he predicted. ‘‘If Mayawati fights the Lok Sabha elections with BJP it will be like committing suicide,’’ he said.