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Despite claiming that she wants the Bahujan Samaj Party-Bhartiya Janata Party coalition to play a long innings, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati has been firing one salvo after another, causing much embarrassment to the partner.
In the five weeks that have passed since the two parties got together to form the UP government, there have been at least two occasions when Mayawati has put the BJP in the dock.
She decided to roll back the coalition partner's much touted "social justice policy", whereby her predecessor Rajnath Singh had introduced reservation within reservation for the backwards castes in all government jobs.
To make matters worse, she went to the extent of passing the buck to BJP ministers Lalji Tandon and Om Prakash Singh and state party chief Kalraj Misra. "I had taken their consent before reversing Rajnath Singh's revised reservation policy," she said.
The chief minister's decision has bread a lot of suspicion between the already warring BJP leaders. An offended Rajnath Singh was understood to have taken the issue to party bigwigs, whose intervention eventually led Mayawati to give another wishy-washy explanation.
And more recently, she affected drastic changes in the coordination committee that was set up with the objective of maintaining a good rapport between the two partners.
In a surprise move that left the BJP leaders dumbfounded, Mayawati reconstituted the coordination committee, removing two senior BJP leaders. Those ousted included Kalraj Misra and Om Prakash Singh.
"Once again her action appears to be aimed at keeping the BJP divided so that she can rule in peace," remarked a BJP leader, who was a senior member of the upper house of legislature. Incidentally, the chief minister had declared that she would not have any member of the upper house on the coordination committee.
While she gave a valid argument for removing Kalraj Misra [she had pulled out her own state chief from the panel], the chief minister was at her wits end to explain why she had removed Om Prakash Singh. An infuriated Om Prakash Singh sought the intervention of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who promptly spoke to Mayawati.
"This is all a creation of the media. I only talked about the reconstitution of the coordination committee but no such reconstitution has been done so far," Mayawati said in a statement.
The BJP is aware that this is not the end of skirmishes. When it teamed up with the BSP, the party knew that Mayawati would keep giving pinpricks.
Considering that on the two previous occasions the marriage of convenience between BJP and BSP lasted four and six months respectively, the longevity of the current partnership could be anybody's guess.
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