— Photo: Subir Roy

BRACING FOR BATTLE: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav at a Samajwadi Party meeting in Lucknow on Wednesday.

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav sees the Congress "hand" in Rashtriya Lok Dal leader Ajit Singh's decision to withdraw the RLD Ministers from the Government.

"The Congress is angry with me but I don't know why Chaudhary Saab was disenchanted with me. Perhaps the Congress has influenced his decision," Mr. Yadav said here on Wednesday.

He accused the RLD president of violating the coalition dharma by rushing to the press with the resignations of his three ministers and of Anuradha Chaudhary as Chairperson of the U.P. Irrigation and Flood Control Commission. The RLD chief should have met him before announcing the decision.

Dismissing reports of a threat to his government in the wake of the RLD pullout, Mr. Yadav said it would prove its majority in the Assembly if and when needed.

On the Vidhan Sabha session from January 15, the Chief Minister said some important legislative business had to be conducted and that was why the House was reconvened.

Mr. Yadav said none of the RLD Ministers opposed the Cabinet decision, at a meeting on December 14 last, to fix cane price at Rs. 130 a quintal.

Mr. Singh said he wanted the price increased to Rs. 135.

Denying that there was any communication gap, the Chief Minister said he had talked to the RLD president on the phone. Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh was also in touch with Mr Singh but it was the RLD chief who shied away from meeting Mr. Amar Singh.

No further increase

Mr. Yadav made it clear that he would not increase the state advised price further as it would upset the balance between the price and the capacity of sugar mills to pay.

He advised Mr. Singh to think big and act like his father, former Prime Minister Chaudhary Charan Singh, who talked about the welfare of farmers of the entire country and did not confine himself to Uttar Pradesh. The RLD president should visit Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra to know about the condition of farmers.

The cane price offered in Uttar Pradesh was the best and farmers' satisfaction was borne out by the fact that there was no agitation in the State unlike as under the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party and BSP regimes, Mr. Yadav claimed. He wondered why Mr. Singh did not oppose the Centre's move to lift curbs on sugar export.

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