New Delhi, Jan. 5: In the Noida murders, the BJP spied a chance to launch a campaign against the Mulayam Singh Yadav government but its MLAs in Uttar Pradesh are playing spoilsport.

The legislators have turned a deaf ear to the party leadership’s suggestion that they resign to lodge their protest against the killings.

On Tuesday, BJP spokesperson Prakash Javdekar had declared that the Uttar Pradesh government had 48 hours to hand over the case to the CBI. Otherwise, his party would take “drastic steps”.

It turned out that the steps Javdekar was referring to involved getting all the 78 BJP legislators to resign from the Uttar Pradesh Assembly.

The move, the party felt, would give a fillip to its campaign in the run-up to the Assembly polls. The BJP’s central leaders conveyed the suggestion to state party president Kesri Nath Tripathi.

However, in the 40 hours that followed, a dharna by MP Ashok Pradhan and MLA Nawab Singh Nagar in Nithari, where most of the victims came from, was the only “drastic” response in sight.

Sources said most MLAs, especially those elected for the first time, were reluctant to quit, and they had a reason. “If I resign, I will not even get my pension. You have to complete your term for that,” one of them said.

Although the BJP leadership told the legislators that pension rules can be altered with retrospective effect, most remained unconvinced.

Javdekar today sang a different tune. “The moral responsibility lies with the state government. Why should our legislators resign?” he asked.