UDUPI: In a major setback to the Congress in Karnataka, former minister and KPCC vice-president Pramod Madhwaraj resigned from the party’s primary membership saying there was ‘political suffocation’. Within hours, Madhwarj joined the BJP in the presence of party state chief and Dakshina Kannada MP Nalin Kumar Kateel and Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai in Bengaluru.
Madhwaraj was recently appointed as the new vice-president of the Congress unit in Karnataka. In a resignation letter e-mailed to KPCC president D K Shivakumar, Madhwaraj blamed ‘suffocating situation’ in Udupi district congress unit for his decision to quit the Congress.
Speculation was rife for the last several months that he will quit Congress and join BJP after he stayed away from Congress events. A few days ago, he had met Bommai during the latter’s visit to Udupi. In the resignation letter, Pramod stated he has decided not to accept the post of vice president of KPCC.
“I regret to inform you that since the last three years the situation in the Udupi district Congress has been a bad experience for me thus leading to political suffocation and the facts of which have been brought to your kind notice. I have observed that no worthwhile steps have been taken by the party to redress my grievances. I have reached a point wherein it is becoming impossible for me to continue in the Congress and to do justice to the new post that has been assigned to me recently.
Hence I have decided not to accept the post of vice president of KPCC,” Madhwaraj said in the letter to Shivakumar. Madhwaraj had served as the minister of Fisheries, Youth Empowerment and Sports in the Siddaramaiah government. H e had contested the 2019 Lok Sabha polls on a JDS ticket under the seat-sharing arrangement with Congress and was defeated by BJP’s Shobha Karandlaje.