By IANS
Lucknow : As the clock strikes 1 Sunday afternoon, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati will take the oath as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh for the fourth time.
The chief minister-designate made this announcement herself after a nearly 50-minute meeting with Governor T.V. Rajeshwar at his official residence Raj Bhavan here Saturday afternoon to stake claim to form the government.
Mayawati drove to the governor's house straight after she had convened a meeting of her newly elected 206 legislators.
"After being formally elected as leader of BSP legislature group, I met the governor, who has invited me to form the next government by virtue of BSP having won a clear majority at the assembly elections," she told reporters.
"I will be sworn in as the next chief minister of this state at 1 p.m. tomorrow," she declared.
She refused to divulge how many ministers would take the oath along with her. "Wait until tomorrow to get your answer," she added with a beaming smile, in her bright lemon-coloured satin clothes.
Asked if her cabinet colleagues would include her new found upper-caste Brahmin mascot Satish Chandra Misra, who was beside her during the meeting with the governor, she quipped, "you can make your own guesses", before driving back to her residence.
Meanwhile, hectic preparations were afoot at the Raj Bhavan for the Sunday's swearing-in ceremony. Sources, however, maintained that the ceremony would not be a very large affair. Not many ministers would be inducted in the first round.
The urgency to put a new government in place was necessitated out of constitutional requirement as the term of the existing state assembly expired on the midnight of Sunday.