Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley, the target of several party leaders who have questioned his appointment as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha after the electoral debacle, today quit as General Secretary of the organisation.
However, Jaitley, who was the chief election strategist and has attracted a lot of flak for the party's performance in the Lok Sabha polls, has not quit as leader of BJP in Rajya Sabha which enabled him to become the Leader of Opposition in the upper house.
BJP President Rajnath Singh today said Jaitley gave his resignation six-seven days ago before he left on a holiday to London.
"In his resignation letter, Jaitley said he was resigning from the post of general secretary under the one-man, one-post rule of the party after his appointment as Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha," Singh said, adding that he has accepted it today.
Asked if the resignation has anything to do with the criticism levelled by leaders like Yashwant Sinha and Jaswant Singh on the way people like Jaitley were being rewarded despite election defeat, the President said the resignation had nothing to do with the latest developments in the party.
In a stinging letter to Singh, Sinha on Saturday had demanded that all the office-bearers should quit their posts accepting responsibility for the defeat. He had questioned the appointments to the parliamentary party posts, saying there seemed to a premium on failure in the party.
Jaswant Singh, another senior leader, had at a meeting of the Core Group last week, had said that there should have been a link between performance and rewards, in what was seen as an attack on Jaitley being nominated the Leader of the BJP in Rajya Sabha.
Sources close to Jaitley said he had resigned a day or two after becoming the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and when the last Parliament session was on.
The three-line letter stated that Jaitley was submitting his resignation as general secretary in keeping with the BJP's principle of one-man, one post.
The resignation has not come under any pressure and has nothing to do with the recent developments in the party, the sources added.
