BHUBANESWAR: Dissident Congress leader Krushna Chandra Sagaria Tuesday has announced his decision to resign from the Odisha State Assembly. He was representing Koraput Assembly constituency since 2014.
Sagaria said he will resign on November 6 after he had gone to assembly and found that the speaker was not present.
The Congress leader said that he took the step following his failure to provide justice to the Kunduli gang rape victim.
“Kunduli incident was a very sensitive issue in which the victim herself alleged that she was gang raped. We also fought alongside to provide justice to her,” he said.
Sagaria said since he belonged to the same constituency of the victim, he had promised her justice. But even after a year, not a single accused has been arrested so far, he added.
The state government is trying to hoodwink the people by ordering two probes--a judicial probe and a crime branch inquiry-- into the incident, he alleged.
Justifying his decision to resign over the incident, he said, “I am also responsible to some extent for the plight of the victim and her relatives as I could not do anything.”
Sagaria was in the news recently for his on-going feud with Opposition Chief Whip in the Assembly Tara Prasad Bahinipati.
He was also not happy with the party leadership's decision to remove him from the post of chairman of the Scheduled Caste Cell of Congress. Though he was appointed as a general secretary of the Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) after his removal from the earlier post, Sagaria refused to accept the new post.