Another Gujarat Congress MLA resigns ahead of RS polls

In a fresh jolt to the Congress ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat, its MLA Brijesh Merja on Friday resigned from the assembly membership, becoming the third legislator of the opposition party to quit this week.

The assembly secretariat confirmed that speaker Rajendra Trivedi has accepted the resignation of Merja, who was elected from the Morbi seat.

Merja, whose resignation comes ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls for four seats in Gujarat on June 19, is the third Congress MLA to quit in the last three days.

Before quitting as a legislator, Merja resigned from the primary membership of the Congress and shared his resignation letter with the media.

In his resignation letter to party president Sonia Gandhi, Merja said though he had joined the Congress to serve people, he was "unable to do so while being in the party".

Merja is the third Congress MLA to have resigned since Wednesday and the eight since March.

On June 3, Congress MLAs Akshay Patel and Jitu Chaudhary had handed over their resignations to Trivedi.

In March, when Rajya Sabha polls were announced, five Congress MLAs had resigned.

With every drop in the MLA count, the Congress's chances of winning the second Rajya Sabha seat are fast diminishing.

The elections for the four seats were supposed to be held on March 26.

However, they were postponed for an indefinite period in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent imposition of nationwide lockdown.

They are now scheduled to he held on June 19.

While the Congress has fielded its senior leaders Shaktisinh Gohil and Bharatsinh Solanki, the ruling BJP has nominated Abhay Bhardwaj, Ramilaben Bara and Narhari Amin as its candidates for the polls, in which MLAs will vote.

In the 182-member Assembly, the BJP has 103 MLAs, while the Congress's count now stands at 65.

While the Bharatiya Tribal Party has two MLAs, the Nationalist Congress Party has one legislator and there is one Independent legislator, Jignesh Mevani.

Ten assembly seats are vacant -- two due to court cases and the rest because of resignations.