Kesri, an old hand in handling split

West Bengal governor Kesri Nath Tripathi, who holds additional charge of Bihar, has personal experience of dealing with cases of splits and giving controversial rulings as the speaker of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly, Tripathi had in 1997 added a new, albeit controversial, dimension to “split” when he came out with his “split within split” theory to justify defections in the BSP, thereby allowing the “minority” BJP government, led by Kalyan Singh (now governor of Rajasthan) to survive after
the BSP had withdrawn support.

The BSP had formed an alliance government with the BJP.

The parties had decided to have alternate chief ministers for a term of six months until the completion of the Assembly's term.

Singh had assumed office after Mayawati stepped down following completion of six months in office.

Tripathi had dealt with another split in the BSP ranks in 2003, when Mulayam Singh Yadav was chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Though Mulayam did not have the required numbers, he managed to engineer defections in the BSP ranks to muster majority in the Assembly.

As many as 40 BSP legislators had then defected, forming a group and extending support to Mulayam.

Tripathi, as Speaker of the House, had granted recognition to the group despite the legislators not defecting in one go and in groups.

Initially, only 24 BSP MLAs had defected, joined by another 13 a few days later.
Though the BSP cried foul, Tripathi recognised the group. The Allahabad High Court later set aside his order by a majority verdict. The supreme court too later disqualified the BSP MLAs with retrospective effect.