New Delhi, December 20
The Centre’s letter to UP Chief Minister Mayawati, asking her to provide details of her proposal to divide Uttar Pradesh, has sparked off a fresh round of verbal duel between the Congress and its principal adversary in UP.

A day after the Home Ministry’s letter, Mayawati alleged the Congress-led Centre wanted to keep the issue of division of state into four parts pending. Congress retaliated by accusing the UP Chief Minister of treating casually a serious issue for “narrow political gains”. Party spokesman Rashid Alvi said only a second States Re-organisation Commission, whenever it is formed, would be competent to take a call on a complex issue like division of a state like UP.

While Mayawati termed the Home Ministry’s move unconstitutional, Alvi said the Centre had all the right to question her on issues related to creation of new states like geographical boundary, revenue, debt and capital.

The key question on which the Home Ministry wants Mayawati’s explanation is how she plans to take care of the huge debt burden on the country’s most populous state.

Posing a string of questions, the ministry also sought from Mayawati clarifications on administrative management of the four new states, whether any economic feasibility study had been done and the basis for suggesting the division.

While Home Ministry officials dub the eight-nine posers to Mayawati as explanations to the “most obvious issues” preceding any such major plan, sources say the move is clearly an effort by the Centre to stump the BSP leader and expose her “complete lack of groundwork” before she went on to announce the populist proposal seeking to divide the poll-bound state into four parts.

The UP Chief Minister, for example, has been asked to give details of her plans to divide the state into four different states with questions like how and who will bear the burden for division and how she will distribute the bureaucracy presently working in UP, among the four states. She has been asked to explain boundaries of the proposed states, the cities designated as state capitals and revenue-sharing arrangement among them.

The Mayawati government’s resolution to divide Uttar Pradesh into four parts - Purvanchal (Eastern UP), Harit Pradesh (Western UP), Bundelkhand and Awadh Pradesh (Central UP) - was passed by the state Assembly amid ruckus on November 21.