From Our Special Correspondent
Bengaluru, Oct 16: Crisis-hit Congress party facing dissent and revolt from within, suffered yet another jolt when its Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka K C Ramamurthy, resigned from his membership of the Upper House and gave up the primary membership of the party.
Ramamurthy, a former IPS officer turned politician and involved in running several educational institutions, is likely to join the BJP shortly.
The Congress Rajya Sabha member submitted his resignation to Vice President and Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, who immediately accepted the resignation.
Ramamurthy was elected to the Rajya Sabha on June 11, 2016 and his term is due to end in June 2022.
In the 2016 elections, Congress fielded him as the party’s third nominee against JD(S) candidate B M Farooq.
His resignation brings down the State’s members in the upper house of Parliament to 11, while the Congress members in the Upper House from the State reduced from eight to seven.
The BJP and JD(S) have three and one members respectively in the Rajya Sabha from the State.
Ramamurthy is the Chairman of the CMR Group of educational institutions.
The Group headed by Ramamurthy runs wide range of courses from the Montessori/Kindergarten level to Post Graduate and PhD programmes, including CMR University.
Ramamurthy served as a former Inspector General of Police in Bengaluru. He was also the Registrar of Bangalore University between 2002 and 2003.
Ramamurthy said he was yet to decide on his future course of action, including joining the BJP. He, however, had met BJP leaders a few days ago.
With Ramamurthy joins a long list of people who have resigned from the Congress and joining the BJP after Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned to power at the Centre in the 2019 elections.
Already 17 Congress and JD(S) legislators resigned from the Legislative Assembly and had brought down the H D Kumaraswamy-led coalition government in Karnataka.
The resignations of the 17 legislators, who were subsequently disqualified by the former Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar helped BJP to storm to power.
The Supreme Court is presently dealing with the validity of the disqualification and the restriction imposed on them against contesting in the elections till the end of the term of the present assembly.