Taking strong exception to the central government's decision to return the proposal for division of the state into four parts, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati on Tuesday flayed the United Progressive Alliance regime for what she termed as "total apathy" towards the issue.
She was addressing a press conference in Lucknow, barely a few hours after receiving Union home secretary's letter with as many as eight key queries, relating to modalities for sharing of the finances and assets of the parent state.
However, terming these as "deliberate roadblock", Mayawati sees the Centre's letter as "blatant violation of the Constitutional provisions" and aimed at "dilly-dallying" the all-important issue.
Mayawati sought to point out that it was the ultimate prerogative of the Centre to create a new state. "Nowhere does the Indian Constitution say that the process of carving out a new state has to be initiated by a state government or by the assembly of the concerned state assembly," she said.
"The national Parliament is fully empowered to suo motu initiate the creation of a new state and after passing such a resolution it has to be sent to the President, who may seek the opinion of the concerned state legislature," she asserts, while citing provisions of Article 3 of the Indian Constitution, which reads as follows, "Parliament may by law form a new state by separation of territory from any state or by uniting two or more states or parts of states or by uniting any territory to a part of any state."
The Article goes on to add, "Parliament can also increase or decrease the area of any state as also alter the boundaries or even the name of any state in the country."
"The fact remains that the state government has no role to play in the creation of another state; and it was amply evident that by shooting off such a letter and raising irrelevant queries, the central government was simply trying to shirk away from its responsibility," she added.
Citing the case of formation of Uttarakhand, Mayawati has urged the Centre to follow the same process.
"Let me remind the Central government that the resolution for formation of Uttrakhand was passed by the state legislature on April 24, 1997 and forwarded to the Central government, which in turn returned it to the state legislature together with a letter from the President, following which a resolution was formally adopted by the state legislature on March 30, 2000," she said.
Earlier, on November 21, the UP chief minister had managed to get a resolution passed by the state assembly for division of the state into four parts - Purvanchal (eastern UP), Paschim Pradesh (western UP), Avadh Pradesh (central UP) and Bundelkhand (southern UP).
"The tactics adopted by the Centre had made it clear that they were just not serious about the issue and were simply trying to pass the buck to the state government for obvious political reasons," she said.
She said, "Right from day one when the Bahujan Samaj Party government was formed in 2007, I have been pursuing the issue with the prime minister, to whom I also wrote a few letters on this regard. However, since the Centre never cared to pay any heed to our repeated appeals, we were left with no choice but to initiate the process by formally getting a resolution passed by the state assembly and then forwarding it to the Central government."
