Birender Singh offers to resign from Cabinet

New Delhi: Union Steel Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh, a prominent Jat leader of BJP in Haryana, Sunday said he has offered to resign from the cabinet and from Rajya Sabha as his son has got a Lok Sabha ticket and he wants to send across a message against dynasty politics.

The announcement, made by the 73-year-old minister during a press conference at his official residence here, followed selection of his son Brijendra Singh as the BJP candidate from Hisar in Haryana.

The senior leader said he has informed BJP's president Amit Shah about his resignation offer and it was up to the party chief to take the final call. Singh, grandson of Jat icon and farmer leader Sir Chotu Ram, said he wants to send across a message of anti-dynasty politics as his son has got the Lok Sabha ticket. "I have offered my resignation from both Union Cabinet and Rajya Sabha and I have informed the party chief Amit Shahji about this," he told reporters here.

Singh said it is the principle of BJP not to promote nepotism and fight against dynasty rule and his decision to resign is in line with the party's principles. Singh, who was with the Congress for almost four decades before switching to the saffron party in 2014, was once in reckoning for Haryana's chief ministership.

Currently, he is a Rajya Sabha member of the BJP from Haryana and his wife is an MLA in Haryana assembly. His son Brijendra, who has been nominated as the BJP candidate for Lok Sabha from Hisar, was an IAS officer. In 2016, Singh was shifted to Steel Ministry from the Ministry of Rural Development, Panchayati Raj and Drinking Water and Sanitation.