Rahul Gandhi started the trend of resignations in Congress: Rajnath Singh on Karnataka crisis

Taking a dig at former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh today said that BJP has nothing to do with the political crisis in Karnataka and it was Rahul Gandhi who started the trend of submitting resignation in the Congress party.

He said that the slew of resignations in Karnataka are in continuation of Rahul's decision to step down as party chief.

"Whatever is happening in Karnataka, our party has nothing to do with it. We are committed to maintaining dignity of parliamentary democracy. Trend of submitting resignations was started by Rahul Gandhi in Congress, it wasn't started by us," Rajnath Singh said in Lok Sabha.


"He himself asked people to submit resignations, even senior leaders are submitting their resignations," Singh said.

He was referring to Rahul Gandhi's resignation last week as party chief after taking moral responsibility for the party's debacle in Lok Sabha elections and to his remarks that numerous people would have to made accountable for the loss.

Rajnath was responding to Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, who accused the BJP of engineering defections to destabilise the ruling Congress-JD(S) coalition.

Singh suggested that senior leaders of the Congress are resigning from their posts as a result of Gandhi's decision and statement.

"The process of resignations continues. BJP has nothing to do with it," he said.

As many as 21 Karnataka Congress ministers have resigned voluntarily from the Kumaraswamy cabinet, while an Independent MLA, who was inducted as minister last month, withdrew support from the government.

The 13-month-old coalition government slumped into crisis following the resignation of their 11 MLAs from the membership of the state Assembly on June 6.

(Inputs from ANI)