The ruling BSP on Sunday got a boost when two legislators—the controversial Hazi Yaqoob Qureshi of UPUDF and Shyam Sundar Sharma of the Loktantrik Congress—joined its ranks. With this, the number of BSP members in the state Assembly has gone up to 209.

Qureshi, who hogged the limelight after declaring a bounty of Rs 51 crore on a Danish cartoonist for drawing a caricature of Prophet Muhammad, was the lone member of the Uttar Pradesh United Democratic Front. Both Qureshi and Sharma dissolved their parties.

After merging his party with the BSP, Qureshi, an MLA from Meerut, accepted he had committed a mistake by leaving the BSP in 2003 and supporting the Mulayam Singh Yadav Government, which worked against Muslims and even put clerics behind bars. He said his merger with BSP was unconditional.

Sharma, an MLA from Maat constituency in Mathura district, said he decided to merge his party with the BSP to support the Mayawati Government, which has taken up cudgels against criminal and mafia elements in the state. Speaker Sukhdev Rajbhar said he accepted the merger after receiving letters from the two MLAs.