GANDHINAGAR: Hours after two
Gujarat Congress MLAs
resigned on Thursday, a third party MLA,
Brijesh Merja
, submitted his resignation at night.
Assembly speaker Rajendra Trivedi
informed the media on Friday of the third resignation.
With Congress losing eight MLAs (including Thursday’s three) since March, the month in which the 2020
Rajya Sabha
elections were originally to be held before they were deferred due to the Covid-19
pandemic
, the party, in all likelihood, will get only one candidate elected to the RS from the state.
The assembly secretariat confirmed that speaker Rajendra Trivedi has accepted the resignation of Merja, MLA for Morbi. Merja, whose resignation comes ahead of the RS polls for four seats in Gujarat on June 19, is the third
Congress MLA
to quit in last three days.In his resignation letter to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi , Merja said though he had joined Congress to serve the people, he was “unable to do so while being in the party”. In 2014, he had joined
BJP for a short period. However, in 2017, he joined Congress and won his first election on a Congress ticket.
While Congress has fielded senior leaders Shaktisinh Gohil and Bharatsinh Solanki, BJP fielded
Abhay Bhardwaj
, Ramila Bara and Narhari Amin as its candidates.