Puducherry CM Narayanasamy resigns after losing confidence vote

Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy and his cabinet colleagues in the Union Territory have resigned.

The government, led by Narayanasamy, lost the confidence vote sought by him in the face of its depleted strength of 11 against the opposition’s 14 in the 33-member Assembly.

After staging a walkout from the Assembly before the motion seeking confidence vote was put up for voting in the House, Narayanasamy proceeded to the Raj Nivas and submitted his resignation to Lt Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan.

V Narayanasamy said the ruling side walked out after the Speaker V Sivakolundhu did not accept its contention that only the elected members have voting rights during the confidence vote, apparently referring to the three nominated BJP members.

“Our view that only the elected members can vote in the House was not accepted by the Speaker. So we walked out of the assembly and met the Lt Governor and gave resignation letter of my cabinet,” Narayanasamy said.

Narayanasamy said he was accompanied by his ministers, Congress and DMK MLAs besides the independent legislator who had earlier supported the government. It was up to the Lt Governor to decide on their resignation, Narayanasamy added.

The Governor had ordered the floor test after the opposition, which has 14 MLAs, petitioned her, saying the government has been reduced to a minority and it should prove its strength in the Assembly.

A day before, two more MLAs of the Congress-DMK alliance in Puducherry had resigned, delivering yet another jolt to Narayanasamy.

On February 21, Congress member K Lakshminarayanan and DMK’s K Venkatesan quit the Assembly, with the former saying the government lacked a majority in the wake of the spate of resignations while the Dravidian party legislator hit out at the alleged lack of funds to meet people’s requirements.

The fresh bout of resignations had taken took the tally in the last few days to three and the cumulative since last month to six and further reduced the strength of the Congress-DMK combine in the Assembly to 11.