Speaker Rajendra Trivedi has accepted the resignation of Merja, who was elected from the Morbi seat.
Giving a fresh jolt to the Congress ahead of the Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat, party MLA Brijesh Merja resigned from the Assembly membership on Friday. He is the third congress MLA to resign in the last three days. Earlier on June 3, Congress MLAs Akshay Patel and Jitu Chaudhary had handed over their resignation letters to Speaker Rajendra Trivedi.
Trivedi has accepted the resignation of Merja, who was elected from the Morbi seat.
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”.
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 to the four Rajya Sabha seats in the state is scheduled to be held on June 19.
The development is a setback to the party’s hopes of winning three out of four seats in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state, especially after the resignation of five other MLAs in March. A similar situation in MP, just days before the lockdown was imposed on March 24, had led to the exit of senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia from the party and the Kamal Nath government being toppled.
The Congress, which has fielded senior leaders Shaktisinh Gohil and Bharatsinh Solanki, now has only 65 MLAs, five short of the 70 required to win two seats. The ruling BJP has 103 in the House, and can ensure victory for two of its candidates, Ramilaben Bara and Abhay Bharadwaj.