Gujarat BJP MP Mansukh Vasava quits party
Bharuch: Gujarat BJP MP and former Union minister Mansukh Vasava, who has been vocal on tribal issues, on Tuesday quit the party and said he would resign from Lok Sabha in the budget session of Parliament.
Vasava had written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week seeking withdrawal of a Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change notification declaring 121 villages of Narmada district as eco sensitive zone.
A six-term MP from Bharuch, Vasava in his letter to Gujarat BJP President C R Paatil said, "I am resigning so that the image of the party is not damaged because of my mistakes.
I have been a loyal worker of the party, so please forgive me."
In the letter to Paatil dated December 28, Vasava said he will resign as Bharuch MP after meeting the Lok Sabha Speaker during the budget session of Parliament.
Vasava said he tried his best to be loyal to the party and assimilate the party's values in his life, adding he is human and prone to mistakes.
"I am ultimately a human and humans tend to commit mistakes. To ensure that the party does not suffer due to my mistakes, I resign from the party, whose forgiveness I seek," the tribal leader said in the letter to Paatil.
BJP statespokesperson Bharat Pandya said the party has received the resignation letter through social media.
"Paatil has spoken to him and assured him that any issue he has will be resolved. Vasava is a senior MP from Gujarat and we will resolve all his issues," Pandya said.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
