Mulayam after winning the vote of confidence. (PTI)

Lucknow, Feb. 26: When chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav stepped into the Uttar Pradesh Assembly at 11 this morning, instead of taking his seat, he went straight to Opposition leader Lalji Tandon to thank him for being there.

For, Tandon’s BJP — the only Opposition party in the House after the others had staged a walkout — granted the Samajwadi Party legitimacy and Mulayam won the confidence vote smoothly two and a half hours later.

Outside the Assembly, protesters staged dharnas and shouted slogans against the Samajwadi government, calling it “unauthorised and irrelevant”.

Congress MLAs had quit the House in the morning, sending their resignations to party president Sonia Gandhi.

Supporters of the Rashtriya Lok Dal and the Jan Morcha took to the streets, venting their ire against the “corrupt and illegitimate Mulayam Singh Yadav government”.

Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey announced that the Samajwadi Party had won the trust vote — the 22nd time it has done so in the last four years of its regime.

Later, the Speaker’s office said 215 MLAs had supported the government.

On January 25, during the 21st confidence vote, the ruling combine had won 223 votes, including that of BSP rebels. As 13 of those MLAs were disqualified, the Samajwadi Party should have got 210 votes today but it got five more. This means there were fresh floor-crossings — most probably by BJP members — as governor T.V. Rajeswar had feared.

The Speaker also extended the life of the House till March 12. Extended life is meant to be a shield against any fresh bid for intervention from the Centre.

The BJP members present in the House today kicked up a ruckus, calling the government “kursi chor” (chair thief), storming the well, yelling at the Speaker and hurling paper balls at the chair. But all this failed to move their Opposition colleagues as they accused the BJP of being a friend of the Samajwadi Party.

“The BJP has been doing this since the beginning of the session in 2003. First, it was Speaker Kesrinath Tripathi who gave legitimacy to the government by recognising the split of the BSP, and now it is the turn of Lalji Tandon to help Mulayam Singh Yadav prove its unwanted majority,” said Jan Morcha president V.P. Singh.

Outside the House, the Congress supporters turned the Vidhansabha Marg, that runs outside the House, into a rally ground as their leaders led by Pramod Tiwari and Salman Khurshid called the trust vote a “a travesty of democratic norms”.

“Charo ore andhera hai, paharadar lootera hai (the state is enveloped in darkness, those on guard have turned looters),” they shouted, setting the tone for the forthcoming election in the state.