LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati on Tuesday announced that she would table the proposal to divide UP into four smaller states in the winter session of the state assembly starting November 21.

The four parts will be — Poorvanchal (East UP), Paschhimanchal (West UP), Bundelkhand and Awadh (central UP). Mayawati got the proposal of dividing UP into four parts approved from her cabinet this morning and later annouced it at a press conference.

The move is being seen as Mayawati's trump card for upcoming assembly elections. The move, political observers, believe has been taken to compensate for anti-incumbency, divert public attention from corruption charges against Mayawati and will put opposition parties on the backfoot. But opposition parties described the move as political stunt.

Mayawati said that the decision to divide UP in four parts had been taken after hectic deliberations and threadbare analysis of its pros and cons. She said that smaller states could be managed in a better way in comparison to bigger ones. She said UP was backward mainly because of its huge size. She said she had created smaller districts in UP for better management.

The chief minister said UP had given maximum number of prime ministers to the country but none of them contributed to development of the state. She said that as per the constitution, re-organisation, division and renaming of states could only be done by Parliament. She said that governments at the centre should have taken the decision of division of the state. But, she said, unfortunately neither BJP led NDA government, nor Congress led UPA government took any decision.

Mayawati said that soon after taking charge of UP in 2007, she had asked Prime Minister to consider division of UP. She said that she also asked for Rs 80,000 crore package for development of east UP and Bundelkhand but the Centre had done nothing. However, she said that she kept on sending reminders to the Prime Minister for division of UP and development package hoping that the Centre would take a positive initiative.

Mayawati said as per the procedure, UPA government should have passed a proposal of UP's division in Parliament and send it for consent of the UP assembly. "But after waiting for a long time, when the Centre did nothing, my government finally decided to bring the proposal of UP's division in the next assembly session and send it to the the Centre to mount pressure on the UPA government," she said.