New Delhi:
Vasundhara Raje, former chief minister of Rajasthan, has finally resigned as Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly.
And her resignation is unconditional, even though she has the support of 58 out of 78 BJP MLAs in Rajasthan. A BJP deadline for her to resign ended on Thursday.
Defiant till the end of a protracted standoff, Raje handed her resignation letter on Friday to senior BJP leader LK Advani instead of party president Rajnath Singh. The pressure to quit had primarily come from the BJP president.
Initially, Raje was to have been given a position in the party's central leadership in Delhi, but Rajnath Singh opposed this and insisted the resignation be unconditional. The Raje issue led to two camps within the BJP - Advani vs Rajnath.
The BJP has convened a Parliamentary Board meeting on Friday to discuss the Raje issue as well as the causes for the poor performance of the party in the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly polls.
Interestingly, while the party lost in three more states on Thursday, it is still obsessed with fixing blame for the loss in the Rajasthan elections six months ago. Or is this just the beginning and will heads roll in other states as well?
The party high command had in August asked Raje to accept the blame for the BJP's defeat in the Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls and step down as Leader of Opposition. Raje held out till now.
The former Rajasthan chief minister had on Thursday missed her appointment with BJP's pointsperson Sushma Swaraj. She was scheduled to meet the senior leader in New Delhi to discuss her fate. However, she remained incommunicado, leaving the party guessing about her next move.