Raipur: In a jolt to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party in Chhattisgarh ahead of the year-end assembly elections, senior tribal leader Nand Kumar Sai on Sunday resigned from the party, ending an association of over four decades. State BJP chief Arun Sao confirmed the development and said the party was unable to contact Sai at the moment, but would make all efforts to clear any misunderstandings he may have.
Sai (77), a two-time Lok Sabha MP and three-time MLA, had previously served as the party’s state president in both Chhattisgarh and undivided Madhya Pradesh.
In his resignation letter, Sai said that his colleagues were conspiring and leveling false allegations to tarnish his image, which had hurt him deeply.
“I am resigning from the primary membership of the BJP and all posts. Whatever responsibilities the party has given me, I have performed them with utmost devotion. I express my gratitude to the party for this,” he said.
Sushil Anand Shukla, head of the Chhattisgarh Congress’s communication wing, said the departure of a “knowledgeable, humble and tolerant leader” like Sai is an indication that the BJP is humiliating and neglecting tribal leaders.
Shukla said, “If he has left the party, it means that the BJP is neglecting this very large section (tribals), which Sai could not tolerate.”
Hailing from northern Chhattisgarh, Sai, a prominent tribal face of the party, was first elected as a Janata Party MLA in 1977 from the Tapkara seat (now in Jashpur district) in Madhya Pradesh.
In 1980, he was elected as the Raigad district unit chief of the BJP. He was elected BJP MLA from Tapkara for the second and third time in 1985 and 1998.
He was elected Lok Sabha MP from Raigarh in 1989, 1996 and 2004 and Rajya Sabha MP in 2009 and 2010. Sai was the Chhattisgarh BJP president from 2003–05 and the MP BJP chief from 1997 to 2000.
He was the first Leader of the Opposition in the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly after the state’s separation from MP in November 2000. Sai was appointed as the chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) in 2017.