Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati has said her legislators will side with the Congress in the floor test in Uttarakhand's Assembly on Tuesday. This, adding to the Supreme Court's ban on nine rebel Congress MLAs from voting in the House, is likely to move the vote in favour of the Congress' Harish Rawat-led camp. The state Assembly has 70 members, of whom 61 can vote. The Congress had 27 elected legislators in the state, and the Bharatiya Janata Party 28.
The specially convened two-hour session was held in the Assembly between 10 am and 1 pm. The result will be kept in a sealed cover till it is submitted to the Supreme Court on May 11, reported The Indian Express. Prohibitory orders were imposed in Dehradun on Monday evening to avoid any untoward incident ahead of the floor test. The local administration also deployed policemen on the road leading to the Vidhan Sabha.
Senior Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Ambika Soni, party in-charge of Uttarakhand, and BJP’s national secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, national spokesperson Anil Baluni, national vice president Shyam Jaju and Tarun Vijay were present in Dehradun ahead of the floor test.
"I thank the Supreme Court for the verdict. Uttarakhand has witnessed a lot of uncertainty in these recent weeks. If we win, we will continue our work to develop the state,” Rawat had said on Monday. Reacting to the verdict, Uttarakhand Congress president Kishore Upadhyay had said that it was also time for the BJP to “learn a lesson”.
President's Rule was implemented and the Harish Rawat government dismissed by the Centre on March 27, a day before he was to seek a vote of confidence in the state Assembly.
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