New Delhi: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath on Thursday said he has received news reports that Congress MLA Hardeep Singh Dang had resigned but has not yet received any formal communication from him in this regard.
Dang’s purported resignation letter is making rounds on social media and efforts to contact him for confirmation have proven futile.
As per sources, Dang was among four MLAs allegedly taken away by the BJP to Bengaluru. However, the BJP has denied the Congress’s charge of poaching its MLAs.
“Hardeep Singh Dang is an MLA of our party. I have received news reports about his resignation. However, till now I have not received any letter in this regard or held discussion with him or personally met him. Till I speak to him in this regard, it is not proper to say anything further,” Kamal Nath was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his media coordinator Narendra Saluja.
Assembly speaker N.P. Prajapati, too, has said that he has not received any resignation letter from Dang, the MLA from Suvasra in Mandsaur district.
“I have received news of Hardeep Singh Dang’s resignation. He has not handed over the resignation letter in person to me. Whenever he will do so personally, I will consider it as per the rules and take necessary action,” Prajapati said.
Dang is the only Sikh in the MP assembly and was reportedly vying for a ministerial berth. In the 2018 assembly elections, he was the only Congress MLA elected from Mandsaur district.
In his purported resignation letter, Dang, a legislator from Suwasra assembly seat in Mandsaur, has alleged that he has felt neglected for the last 14 months and no minister was ready to do work related to his constituency.
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“Middlemen and corrupt persons are sitting in the government. I have to make many rounds of Bhopal for peoples minor works, but nothing happens,” Dang is reported to have said in his letter, dated March 5, to the assembly speaker.
MLA Hardeep Singh Dang. Photo: Facebook
“I was the only Congress MLA from Ujjain division in 2013 but neither did I get a ministerial berth nor were developmental projects carried out in my constituency. I was not even given proper accommodation for my stay in Bhopal,” his letter said.
According to a report in TOI, Dang further wrote in the letter addressed to the chief minister, “I had verbally expressed my pain to you and wrote a letter on February 16, 2019. But with deep regret, I would like to inform you that neither you nor your ministers paid any attention to my grievances. People of Suwasra sent me to the assembly for the second time with great hope and aspiration. But ever since your government has been formed, neither you nor your ministers pay attention to the development of my assembly seat.”
“It is perhaps my fault that I do not belong to any faction. I am not in Kamal Nath’s camp or Digvijaya Singh’s faction or Jyotiraditya Scindia’s group. I have only been a Congressman and therefore, facing all the problems,” Dang said in his letter. “I am sorry to say that nobody heeded my grievances. Please accept my resignation. My struggle for farmers and development of my region will continue.”
Reacting to the development, state BJP president V.D. Sharma said, “Not only public, but even Congress MLAs are suffering under the Kamal Nath government. MLA Hardeep Singh Dang has resigned because he was not able to get common people’s work done by this government which is sunk deep into corruption.”
Dang’s resignations came hours after the Congress announced that “Operation Lotus had failed and Operation Kamal had triumphed” and had claimed that Dang and the other three ‘missing’ MLAs were in touch with the chief minister and would return soon to the state. A local newspaper in Suwasra had carried a full-page advertisement on Thursday, with a full-page picture of Dang and the message: “Main Congressi tha aur aajeevan Congressi rahunga (I was a Congressman and will remain one all my life).”
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However, late in the evening, Dang’s resignation letter was being circulated on social media.
Two other Congress MLAs – former minister Bisahulal Singh, who is a legislator from the Anuppur seat, and Raghuraj Singh Kansana – are allegedly still in Bengaluru. Bisahulal Singh’s son Tejbhan Singh on Thursday also lodged a complaint with the police saying that his father was “missing”.
(With inputs from PTI)