Former speaker of Lok Sabha P A Sangma, who is in the fray for the Presidential poll, on Wednesday resigned from the Nationalist Congress Party.
NCP chief Sharad Pawar had urged Sangma to withdraw from the contest, after the ruling United Progressive Alliance unanimously nominated senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee as it its candidate for the President's post.
NCP has been a constituent of the UPA since 2004.
"He resigned out of self-respect. He has been tortured for the last few days," Janata Party president Dr Subramnian Swamy told journalists in Delhi on Wednesday.
Swamy had earlier met Sangma, after the NCP apparently threatened to sack the latter if he did not withdraw from the Presidential race.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance is scheduled to meet at senior BJP leader L K Advani's residence later today, where they are likely to extend their support for Sangma's candidature.
"Sangma has quit the NCP out of self-respect because the party humiliated him," said Swamy.
He also expressed confidence that Mamata Banerjee, chief of UPA ally Trinamool Congress, will support Sangma.
The tribal leader from north-east earlier received support from Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik and AIADMK chief J Jayalalithaa for his candidature.
Sangma sent his resignation letter to party chief Sharad Pawar soon after Janata Party president Swamy, a constituent of the NDA, met him.
"I hereby tender my resignation from the primary membership of NCP with immediate effect. I place on record my deep gratitude to the president, other office bearers and rank and file of NCP for the courtesies extended to me by them at personal level while I was a member of the party," he wrote in his resignation letter.
In a statement, Sangma said he had "no option but to resign" from NCP "without any personal intent whatsoever of embarrassing the party and its leadership".
Talking about the circumstances in which he had to quit, the 64-year-old leader said, "Disinclination of the NCP to endorse my candidature amounts to a denial of the aspirations of the tribals of the country."
He noted that his candidature had been projected by the Tribal Forum of India and he cannot "ignore the feeling of the tribals that Raisina Hill (Rashtrapati Bhavan) should not continue to be a distant dream for them".
Noting that the NCP, of which he was a founder member, had "not found it possible to endorse his candidature", Sangma said, "I believe that I have also worked hard for building up the base of the party in several parts of India. Indeed, the national status of the party has been significantly due to the mass support from among the tribals who constitute one-hundred million of our population and among whom I have ceaselessly worked."
Additional inputs from PTI
