The parties opposed to the move and her government stumped by the sudden turn of events and looking at the encouraging response to her move from all sections, the coming assembly elections are sure to focus on the issue of division of UP, say Agra's political pundits.

In the past few days there have been a series of meetings and conferences supporting her move and to specifically demand that Agra be the capital of the new state of West UP. "Mayawati has already put both Ajit Singh and the BJP on the back-foot.

These two parties have in the past supported the demand for division of UP but are now in opposition as is the Mulayam outfit and the Congress," says senior media person Rajeev Saxena.

Bahujan Samaj Party leaders at the local level see political opportunities and a broad-basing of the party organizations.

"From just one now, the BSP could rule four states in future," said BSP activist Pushkar Arvind.

It was Dr. BR Ambedkar who in 1954 had advocated splitting of bigger states in to smaller units. Later the Socialists like Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia, Jay Prakash Narain, Acharya Kriplani and others favored re-drawing of the administrative map of India, but Jawahar Lal Nehru, the then prime minister supported the SRC recommendation of reorganizing states on linguistic basis.

Choudhary Charan Singh also favored smaller states. Later his son Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh launched a movement for Harit Pradesh, comprising 22 districts of West UP.

It may be recalled that Dr. KM Pannikar in his dissenting note to the SRC report, had opposed linguistic states and favored formation of a state of West UP. For years, a state socialist leader Hukum Singh Parihar had lone-handed carried on his movement for a Braj Pradesh, with Agra as its capital. During the 1975-77 Emergency late Sanjay Gandhi almost succeeded in carving out a new state of West UP with Agra as its capital. The new state was to include parts of Haryana too.

The issue came in sharper focus when Agra lawyers in early 1980s launched a mass movement for a bench of the Allahabad High Court at Agra. The union government set up the Jaswant Singh Commission which supported the demand, justifying the need for a separate bench for West UP.

Almost all political parties have at one point or the other supported the restructuring of the federal polity on a more scientific line, taking into account the area and population, says political analyst Rajeev Saxena. "Size does make a difference. For political reasons, the Congress party has been averse to splitting bigger states into smaller ones and pointlessly dragging feet on such demands as is happening in Andhara Pradesh. Earlier the Uttarakhand movement was unnecessarily prolonged for years. The time has come when a comprehensive exercise to redraw the political map of India should be carried out through a new States Reorganization Commission," suggests social scientist Paras Nath Choudhary, ex-researcher at the South Asia Institute of Heidelberg University.

People in the Taj city are excited and look forward to a whole lot of new opportunities, should the dream for a separate state of West UP take shape. "With the unwieldy size of Uttar Pradesh Agra region has always got a raw deal, with all the funds and tax revenues siphoned off to eastern districts. A new state of West UP, whatever its name, would definitely spur growth and also inculcate a sense of pride and identity," says KC Jain, real estate developer’s organization president.