Mayawati accuses Gehlot of poaching BSP MLAs, phone-tapping; demands President's Rule in Rajasthan

Lucknow: Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati said on Saturday that Rajasthan Governor Kalraj Mishra should take cognisance of the instability in the state and recommend President’s Rule. Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, she said, had openly violated the Anti-Defection law and cheated the BSP for a second time by getting its MLAs included in the Congress. “And it is also evident he did an illegal and unconstitutional thing by phone- tapping,” Mayawati said in a series of tweets in Hindi. “The governor (of Rajasthan) must take cognisance of the political deadlock and instability prevailing in Rajasthan, and should recommend imposition of President’s Rule in the state, so that the condition of democracy in the state does not deteriorate,” she said. Sachin Pilot and other Congress dissidents have got a four-day reprieve from any action by Rajasthan Speaker on the disqualification notices served on them, as the high court on Friday extended the hearing into their petition to the next week. The Rajasthan High Court will resume the hearing at 10 am on Monday and Speaker CP Joshi will not take any action on the disqualification notices till 5.30 pm on Tuesday. Outside the courtroom, the Congress and its government in Rajasthan acted tough, even sending a police team to a hotel in Gurgaon’s Manesar where the dissidents are supposed to be holed up. Pilot and 18 other dissident MLAs are challenging the Congress move to disqualify them from the state Assembly, and were initially asked to send their replies by 1 pm on Friday. Speaker CP Joshi had written to the court that he will not act on the notices till 5 pm on Friday, by when the court proceedings were earlier expected to be over. His counsel agreed to extend this breather to 5.30 pm on Tuesday as the division bench of Chief Justice Indrajit Mahanty and Justice Prakash Gupta had not delivered its order by that time. An Assembly statement said this was mutually agreed by both sides. Pilot was sacked as deputy chief minister and the president of the state unit of the party after he rebelled against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demand for a CBI probe into the audiotapes that showed a conspiracy to topple the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan.