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Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Rajnath Singh sacked power minister Naresh Agarwal because the latter was planning to join the Samajwadi Party along with his supporters and embarrass the Bharatiya Janata Party, according to senior BJP leader J P Mathur.
Mathur told rediff.com that Agarwal, founder-president of the Loktantrik Congress Party, had been hobnobbing with Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and party general secretary Amar Singh since the last two months.
"Naresh Agarwal's game plan was to join the Samajwadi Party with a few party legislators and thus embarrass the BJP-lead coalition government in UP."
"But Rajnath Singh, who had smelt something fishy, moved swiftly and sacked Agarwal before he could do any damage," Mathur said.
Agarwal's needless but consistent criticism of the chief minister made the latter suspicious, he explained.
BJP general secretary Narendra Modi alleged that the Samajwadi Party's Amar Singh has been making wild allegations against the BJP following the killing of party MP Phoolan Devi with an eye on the assembly polls.
"SP leaders have been enticing our legislators and, among our coalition partners, they had targeted Naresh Agarwal," he pointed out.
In the bid to contain the fall-out of Agarwal's possible exit, Rajnath Singh clandestinely got in touch with LCP ministers in a bid to isolate the LCP chief.
Playing the caste card, the chief minister targeted eleven LCP ministers who, like himself, are from the Thakur caste.
The upshot was that Agarwal's decision to withdraw support to the BJP-led coalition was challenged by his own MLAs, thus ensuring the government's survival, at least for the time being.
Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri has already said that he will not insist on a trial of strength on the floor of the assembly.
BJP leaders at the central level have also made it clear that there is no danger to the Rajnath Singh government.
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