The writing was on the wall for everyone to see several weeks ago, but the Congress leadership chose to look the other way. This has come to haunt the party as it fights to save the only government in north India. Vikramaditya Singh on Tuesday finally resigned from the cabinet of his own volition, fuelling speculations that Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu-led government may soon topple.
The development comes just hours after six Congress MLAs rebelled to vote for the BJP candidate in Monday’s Rajya Sabha polls. This paved the unexpected victory of a BJP candidate even though the Congress had a majority in the state assembly.
Now Vikramaditya Singh’s resignation has caused more pains to the Congress leadership as they expect more MLAs to jump the ship.
Explaining the reason for his resignation, Singh told reporters, “There were from some quarters attempts to humiliate me in my functioning as a cabinet minister…I respect the CM but there has to be coordination among the Council of Ministers…This is a breach of trust, something that has led to where we are standing today…”
He also said that his own government could not allocate land to construct a statue of his father, Virbhadra Singh, who was a former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh. Singh’s mother, Pratibha Singh, is the president of the Himachal Congress.
Singh had given indication of discontent way back in early January when he openly defied his party leadership and praised the RSS. He even flaunted his identity as a ‘proud Sanatani’ when he said that he would be attending the Ayodhya event on 22 January. He was later accorded the status of a state guest by the Yogi Adityanath government to be a part of the Ayodhya event.
Defying his party leadership, Singh had said, “I would like to thank the Ram Janm Bhumi Trust for sending me an invitation to the Pran Pratishtha ceremony; I have received an invitation through RSS. As I have said this is not an individual invitation, it is to recognise the contribution of my father Shri Virbhadra Singh Ji to Hinduism and the God and Goddess in the state.”
The young dynast had also highlighted the contribution of his late father in promoting Hinduism in the hill state.