UNI

Lucknow, Jan 19: The Uttar Pradesh Congress on Thursday morning handed over a letter to governor T V Rajeswar withdrawing support to the three-year-old Mulayam Singh Yadav government.

A Congress delegation, led by its state unit chief Salman Khurshid, met the Governor and handed him over the letter. The party had extended its support to the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led SP in August, 2003 following the collapse of Mayawati-led BSP-BJP government ''to bring to power a secular government and to defeat any designs by the communal parties to regain power in the state.'' Last night, Congress had announced its decision to withdraw the outside support to the Mulayam Singh government as it was encouraging corruption and had failed to maintain law and order in the state.

The ruling coalition, however, still maintains a comfortable majority in the assembly, which meets today for Winter session.

The Congress ended its three-year-old ''outside support'' to the SP government after Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) last week withdrew its three ministers from the ruling coalition. The Congress, which had otherwise been vocal against the Mulayam government, had often stated it was technically not supporting the government.

With this, the 16 party MLAs will sit in the opposition benches during the 14-day assembly session.

It is for the second time that Congress has withdrawn support from the Mulayam Singh Yadav government. In April, 1991 the party had withdrawn support from the Mulayam-led government. But before that the then Chief Minister had announced to dissolve the state legislative assembly.