NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday launched a street protest in the capital against a federal decision to dismiss the government of India's most populous state. A delegation of BJP leaders met Indian President K.R. Narayanan after he asked the cabinet to reconsider its overnight decision to dismiss the BJP government in northern Uttar Pradesh. The BJP is India's main opposition party and the leading party in federal parliament. BJP chief Lal Krishna Advani began a sit-in at the presidential palace and was joined at the gates by 200 supporters including dozens of party lawmakers, witnesses said. India's cabinet was meeting to reconsider its decision that followed a report from Bhandari that law and order had broken down in the northern state, which has given India eight of its 13 prime ministers since independence in 1947. Lawmakers threw chairs and microphones at each other during a bitter vote of confidence which the BJP government won on Tuesday with the help of defectors from rival groups after losing support from a low-caste ally on Sunday. The request by the president, whose approval of cabinet decisions is usually a formality, raised the BJP's hopes of retaining the politically sensitive state. As the cabinet of Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral's cabinet sat, Advani shot off a letter cautioning the premier about planned street protests. "I will personally lead a mass agitation and sit in dharna (sit-in) which will commence tomorrow outside parliament, if the (Uttar Pradesh) state government led by...Kalyan Singh is dismissed," the letter said. The centrist Congress, which offers critical support to Gujral's loose coalition, demanded the sacking of the Hindu nationalists after violence reared up in the state assembly. Political analysts said events in the state, which accounts for a maximum 85 seats in the 545-seat federal parliament, could influence electoral alliances and eventually the composition of India's federal government.