An MP from Mulayam Singh Yadav‘s alliance partner, Ajit Singh’s RLD, faces a decision similar to the one the UP Chief Minister had to make when he gave up his Lok Sabha seat for staying on in the state Assembly.Singh’s party, an alliance partner of the SP in UP, won three seats in the parliamentary polls. While Singh and his colleague Munshiram, are not members of the state legislature, party member Anuradha Choudhury, who won from the Kairana parliamentary constituency, has to decide on which membership to keep before May 30.Choudhury is a Cabinet minister in UP and holds the prestigious PWD portfolio. However, according to party sources, the decision is clear — Choudhury will keep her Parliament membership and give up the Cabinet post. Says a highly-placed source, ‘‘Choudhury will have to give up the Cabinet post and the party will decide whether to appoint another person or not.’’There are two crucial reasons for the decision — one, the UP government will soon have to prune its jumbo Cabinet in the state, already bulging with 90 ministers, in keeping with a new law. The law stipulates that the strength of the Cabinet can’t exceed 15 per cent of the strength of the House. Accordingly, Mulayam will have to prune his ministry to 60 members.The RLD has three Cabinet ministers, three Ministers of State and one MoS with independent charge. The number would have to be scaled down considerably and Choudhury would have retained her ministership at the cost of some of her colleagues losing out.Besides, the RLD requires at least three MPs to form a ‘‘group’’ in Parliament, to be recognised as a political party and for other constitutional reasons. The RLD, therefore, can least afford to let go of Choudhury for the state, or it stands to lose its identity in the Lok Sabha. The party has concluded that it needs to retain all three MPs at the Centre.
