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Maharashtra Governor P C Alexander resigned on Tuesday amid speculation that he has been approached by the National Democratic Alliance to stand for the office of Vice-President.
Alexander, whose name was initially floated by the NDA as its candidate for the presidential election, handed over his resignation letter to Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishanchand Advani, official sources said.
Speaking to rediff.com, an official in the governor's office said he had just heard reports about Alexander's resignation, adding no official statement was possible at this juncture.
He also said that the governor was scheduled to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani in New Delhi.
He said Alexander would come back to Mumbai on Wednesday evening.
Alexander was appointed governor by the Narasimha Rao government in 1993 and was reappointed for another term by the NDA government, after he had established good equations with the then Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party government in Maharastra.
The name of Alexander, a former bureaucrat who served as principal secretary to late Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, was opposed by the Congress and many other opposition parties, when the NDA proposed his name as a presidential nominee.
He had quit as principal secretary to Rajiv Gandhi when a spying scandal broke out involving certain officials in the PMO and the Rashtrapati Bhavan and later became High Commissioner in London, a post he had to leave after the National Front came to power in 1989.
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