Silvassa: Days before the Loksabha election, six time former MP and president of Congress in the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli Mohan Delkar today resigned from the party and announced to contest as an independent candidte in the LS poll from this constituency adjoining South Gujarat.

56 year old Delkar, a tribal leader, who was defeated in 2009 and 2014 on this reserved seat ( for ST) by Nathubhai Patel of BJP (who has been made the party candidate again), said that he has sent his resignation from the party and PCC president post to national president Rahul Gandhi.

He said that he has decided to contest the election independent after doing a survey in the constituency and consulting his supporters. He was first elected MP from this seat as an independent.

Notably, Congress was yet to announce its candidate for the seat which once was a stronghold of the party.

Delkar was absent from the meeting of Rahul Gandhi in neighbouring Valsad in February this year but he had attended a meeting of PM Narendra Modi in January.

Just ahead of the 2017 Assembly elections in Gujarat, there were reports of him quitting the party to join the BJP. He, however, did not quit.

Delkar’s father Sanjibhai Delkar had also represented Dadra & Nagar Haveli in Lok Sabha on Congress ticket. Mohan Delkar won the 1989 Lok Sabha elections as an Independent candidate. In 1991 and 1996, he was re-elected on Congress ticket. Two years later, he quit the Congress, and won the seat again on a BJP ticket. In 1999 Lok Sabha elections, he quit the BJP to contest the Lok Sabha election as an Independent. He won, and five years later — in 2004 — he was re-elected as an Independent MP. In 2009, he returned to the Congress but lost the Lok Sabha elections to BJP’s Natubhai Patel, his protege, by a thin margin of only 600 votes. He lost to Patel again in 2014 on a Congress ticket.

DeshGujarat