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Minister of State for Revenue Haren Pandya on Tuesday resigned from the Narendra Modi ministry in Gujarat.
The chief minister accepted Pandya's resignation letter and will forward it to the governor.
Pandya first called the press to his office and announced his intention to resign and then went to submit his resignation to the Chief Minister Narendra Modi.
The distrust between them is so complete that he didn't want Modi to manipulate the issue of resignation in any manner.
A Modi confidante told rediff.com, "Our Delhi office gave only two options to Pandya -- resign or apologise."
"We have evidence against him. He cannot work against the party's interest. He appeared before the (people's) tribunal (headed by Justice (retd) Krishna Iyer investigating the Gujarat riots) and gave a completely wrong story against Modi," he said.
However, Pandya said, "This is a lie. Check it up with the party president Rajendrasinh Rana."
When asked to elaborate, he said, "I resigned because I do not want to harm the whole party just for the sake of one man's obstinate attitude."
Pandya was issued the show-cause notice by state BJP president Rajendrasinh Rana to explain if he had appeared before the tribunal.
According to the tribunal's report, a Cabinet minister who appeared before it had claimed that Modi met top police officials on February 27 and given oral directives to not interfere if the crowd retaliated.
One of the members of the tribunal, political scientist Ghanshayam Shah, said, "I was not present when Pandya met the tribunal. But he did talk to other members."
The Modi loyalist claims that they have enough evidence to prove when and where Pandya talked to tribunal members.
A confident Pandya denied it and said, "God is with me," while the Modi loyalist claimed, "After all, the chief minister of the state is the chief .How can you ignore his authority? Pandya is a loser. It's now very unlikely that he will even get a ticket to contest election."
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