BJP MP quits Lok Sabha after clash with Mahajan
Banwarilal Purohit, the Bharatiya Janata Party MP from Nagpur, resigned from the Lok Sabha on Thursday in the wake of his differences with BJP general secretary Pramod Mahajan over the allocation of coal mines to Nippon Denro Ispat Limited owned by the Mittal group.
Significantly, like B L Sharma 'Prem' -- the BJP MP from East Delhi who resigned from the Lok Sabha earlier this year -- Purohit submitted his resignation to Speaker Purno A Sangma.
In a separate letter addressed to BJP president Lal Kishinchand Advani,
Purohit also resigned from the party's national executive committee. He, however, said
he would remain loyal to the party as "a humble and ordinary worker."
Purohit -- who owns the Hitavada newspaper in Nagpur -- was earlier elected to the Lok Sabha on a Congress ticket. He resigned from the Congress over the Ayodhya issue and joined the BJP. He was elected to the current Lok Sabha on a BJP ticket.
Explaining his reasons for resigning from the Lok Sabha in his
letter to BJP Parliamentary Party leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee,
Purohit disputed the former prime minister's claim made in a media release on Tuesday that he had apologised to Mahajan.
Alleging that the so-called apology has caused "incalculable harm to his prestige and self-esteem," Purohit said, "I can never apologise to Mahajan who had used derogatory language against me several times."
Purohit had alleged corruption in the allocation of captive coal mines to the Nippon Denro Ispat Limited by the Shiv Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra. He had also alleged that Mahajan had pressurised him to withdraw his petition against the clearance given to the Mittals's power project in Chandrapur besides the allocation of coal mines.
Mahajan had admitted that he asked Purohit to withdraw the petition, saying the Maharashtra government had merely taken follow-up action after the P V Narasimha Rao government cleared the project in 1993. He questioned Purohit's action in levelling charges against the state government without raising the issue in the party forum.
UNI
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