Ahead of the Rajya Sabha Election on June 19, another Gujarat Congress MLA has resigned from the assembly membership, reports said on Friday.
Brijesh Merja, who is MLA from Gujarat's Morbi constituency, tendered his resignation to Speaker Rajendra Trivedi on Friday. The development comes a day after two Congress MLAs resigned as members of the legislative assembly.
As per reports, the Speaker has accepted the resignation of Merja, who is the third Congress legislator to resign from the party in the last three days.
Two other Congress legislators- Akshay Patel and Jitu Chaudhary- resigned on Wednesday evening and their resignations were accepted on Thursday.
Merja had resigned from the primary membership of the Congress before quitting as a legislator, the reports said.
Merja is the eight Congress MLA to resign from the assembly membership since March.
On Monday, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced that elections to the deferred 18 Rajya Sabha seats will be held on June 19, 2020. In Gujarat, the election will be held in four seats
Earlier, the elections were scheduled to be held on March 26,2020 but were deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the countrywide lockdown.
Polling for the 18 seats- four each are from Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat, two from Jharkhand, three each from Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and one each from Manipur and Meghalaya, will begin at 9 am on June 19 and will continue till 4 pm. Counting of votes would begin at 5 pm the same day, the ECI had stated.
