RLD may withdraw support to Mayawati tomorrow

Ajit Singh, Rashtriya Lok Dal chief, has decided to hold the meeting of his party's office bearers on Friday instead of Saturday.

The move came after a series of hectic parleys on Thursday between Ajit Singh, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

In the morning Yadav, accompanied by SP general secretary Amar Singh, had first called on Sonia Gandhi to seek her party's support for a secular alternative to Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government in Uttar Pradesh.

In the afternoon Ajit Singh met the Congress president.

Congress sources told rediff.com that Sonia Gandhi has agreed to give in writing the support of her legislative party in the state in favour of a SP-Congress-RLD combine to enable it to stake its claim before Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri.

Shastri had turned down the claim made by Yadav only a few months back on the plea that his list did not comprise the written support of the Congress leadership, and therefore was short of a majority.

Ajit Singh's decision to hold the meeting a day earlier, observers said, is likely to announce a withdrawal of support to the Mayawati-led Uttar Pradesh government. The RLD has already withdrawn its ministers from the ministry.

"Our attempt at the moment is only to resolve the differences in the opposition parties and come together on a single platform to form a credible alternative to the Mayawati government," Ajit Singh said.

"The (Uttar Pradesh) government will fall under its own misdeed," he said, when asked if the unity among the opposition parties was aimed at toppling the state government.

Amar Singh, significantly, said his party will start making its moves once the RLD announced its decision on Friday.