AHMEDABAD, FEBRUARY 16: Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) secretary and scheduled caste leader Parimal Solanki along with two of his supporters resigned from Congress on Tuesday in support of Meira Kumar who quit the party recently.The two Solanki supporters who have resigned from the party are State Congress relief committee member I P Sadhu and ex-general secretary of the State Youth Congress Purshottam S Solanki.``We have resigned from the primary membership of Congress in protest against the anti-Dalit policies of party leaders, because of which our leader Meira Kumar was forced to part ways with the party,'' Solanki told Express Newsline. He claimed that 80 per cent of the Dalit leaders and workers of the State Congress would soon quit the party.Solanki, who is also State president of the Samta Andolan, an organisation which follows the principles of the late Congress Dalit leader Jagjivan Ram, said he, along with Sadhu and Purshottam Solanki, had faxed their resignation letters to GPCC president C D Patel.``We shall not go back on our decision to leave the party,'' Solanki said when asked whether the resignation letters had been accepted by Patel. The former GPCC secretary said he and his supporters were forced to resign from the Congress because the State party leadership had started sidelining important State Dalit leaders of the party.Solanki said the decision was taken after a meeting with Meira Kumar at her New Delhi residence on February 3. He said ever since Meira Kumar had left the Congress, an average of 500 to 1,000 Dalit leaders and workers from all over the country had been meeting her daily.When asked which political party he was planning to join now that he had left the Congress, Solanki said that would depend on Meira Kumar's further course of action. ``Meiraji has got invitations from leaders of the BJP, Samata Party and Nationalist Congress Party to join their respective organisations and she will decide in a day or two after consulting her supporters,'' he added.
