A state government is teetering on the edge of Article 356, and suddenly it seems like even the coalition age may not have fully blunted the edge of this favoured weapon of the Centre against the states in bygone years. The latest political drama was ostensibly kicked off by a Supreme Court judgement. On February 13, a five-judge bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan — with Justices H.K. Sema, A.R. Lakshmanan, P.K. Balasubramanyan and D.K. Jain — disqualified 13 Uttar Pradesh MLAs who had broken away from the BSP to form, alongwith 24 other BSP MLAs, the Loktantrik Bahujan Dal which extended support to the Samajwadi Party to enable Mulayam Singh Yadav to form the government in August 2003. Varghese K. George mined the apex court judgement to shine more light on the controversy

• What are the significant facts and dates in the case relating to the defection of 37 BSP MLAs?

On August 27 2003, 13 MLAs of the BSP met the UP governor requesting him to invite the SP to form a government. On August 29, 2003, the governor invited Mulayam Singh Yadav to form a government and gave him two weeks to prove majority. On September 4, 2003, BSP legislature party leader Swami Prasad Maurya filed a petition before the speaker to disqualify the 13 MLAs under the anti-defection law.

On September 6 2003, 37 BSP MLAs met the speaker claiming they were a separate party. The same day, the speaker accepted their claim, and the new party merged with the SP.

... contd.