Babulal Marandi resigns from BJP and Lok Sabha

Sewatand, May 18: BJP national vice-president Babulal Marandi today formally announced his resignation from the party's primary membership and from the Lok Sabha.

Mr Marandi, who broke his 24-hour fast this morning, told reporters here that he had put in his resignation paper on May 15 to the party high command's emissary Sanjay Joshi.

Mr Marandi announced that he would float a new regional party soon to meet the aspirations of the people and made it clear that the proposed party would not have any alliance with national political parties.

Besides, a letter seeking resignation from the Lok Sabha was sent to Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and Party President emissary Rajnath Singh.

Mr Marandi was the party's lone MP from Jharkhand and was elected from Koderma constituency.

The state has 14 representatives in Parliament.

Mr Marandi, who was the first Chief Minister of Jharkhand, today reietrated that he resigned from the party on the ground of three points, development, corruption and security of the people for which he had been agitating for the last several months.

He said he had no agenda to topple the Arjun Munda government in the state for he wanted to give him (Mr Munda) more time so that people could see the misgovernance.

The former Chief Minister has already been associated with a non-political organisation--Jharkhand Vikash Morcha (JVM)--whose convenor is Mr Stephen Marandi, an independent MLA.

Mr Stephen Marandi is also the convenor of the state UPA.

Mr Babulal Marandi had openly criticised the state government for its alleged involvement in corruption, failure to check CPI (Maoist) violence at a JVM meeting held in Jamshedpur recently.

He accused the government of not taking proper initiative in carrying out developmental schemes in remote places of the state.

For the last three days, Mr Babulal Marandi did not confirm or deny about his resignation keeping the people guessing on it.

UNI