Gegong Apang, former chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh resigned from the Bhartiya Janata Party on Tuesday accusing both the party and the Narendra Modi government of “not addressing the real issues” and ignoring “morality and ethics.”

Assembly polls in Arunachal Pradesh are likely to be held with Lok Sabha elections later this year. Sixty nine-year-old Apang’s resignation can potentially trigger another political realignment in the state with Congress unit chief Takam Sanjoy saying several BJP leaders are in touch with the Congress.

In December 2016, Arunachal Pradesh became the first state in the northeast to have a full-fledged BJP government when Khandu and 33 other MLAs of the People’s Party of Arunachal (PPA) joined the saffron party.

Apang had joined the BJP in 2014 in the run-up to the last assembly polls that year. He lost to Alo Libang who later joining the BJP and inducted as a cabinet minister in Pema Khandu government.

In his resignation letter to BJP chief Amit Shah, the former CM also cited his displeasure at the BJP declaring last October that Khandu will be the CM candidate in the coming elections.

“The decision to put Shri Pema Khandu’s name as CM before the election is neither the norm or the tradition that a cadre based party like the BJP had followed,” he wrote in the letter. He also alleged that the party’s general secretary Ram Madhav who is in charge of the northeast, did not allow many members to place their views in the state executive meeting of the party in November 2018.

Apang also wrote that the BJP did not get people’s mandate in 2014 but “leadership used every dirty trick” to install Kalikho Pul as the Chief Minister and how the BJP leadership did not think of “morality and ethics by installing many more BJP governments in the north east.”

Tapir Gao, president of the state unit of BJP played down Apang’s resignation. “Political parties always have an open door for people to join and leave,” he said.

First Published: Jan 16, 2019 09:26 IST