“I am not unhappy with the CM or the organisation nor do I seek any post. I have merely followed the words I had spoken,” he said.

As the news of his resignation spread, BJP state president C P Joshi met Meena and spoke to him for about half an hour on Thursday. Later in the evening, party president J P Nadda called him to Delhi, following which Meena left for the national capital.

Meena said his resignation was also the reason why he did not attend the CM’s cabinet meeting held recently as he had “no moral right”.

Although senior to the Chief Minister and the two Deputy CMs in both age and party, Meena, a former Rajya Sabha MP, two-term LS MP and six-time MLA, was made a cabinet minister in the Bhajan Lal Sharma government. In the official hierarchy, he is next only to the CM and the two deputy CMs. He holds four departments: Agriculture and Horticulture; Rural Development; Disaster Management, Relief and Civil Defence; and Public Prosecution Redressal Department.

On speculation whether he had taken this step out of dissatisfaction with the party or the government, Meena said, “There is no reason for me to be angry… I had also met the CM and very respectfully, he told me that ‘no, your resignation will not be accepted’. But I told the CM that since I had spoken amidst the people and announced that I will resign if we don’t win this seat (Dausa), I had to resign. It is natural that I cannot stay in a government bungalow, government car or office.”

In the Dausa Lok Sabha seat, Congress’s Murari Lal Meena had defeated BJP’s Kanhaiya Lal Meena with a margin of over 2.3 lakh votes. While campaigning for Kanhaiya Lal during LS polls, Meena had said, on at least two occasions, that if Kanhaiya Lal doesn’t win from Dausa then he will resign as a minister.

On June 3, a day ahead of the results, Meena reiterated his stand and said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had handed him a list of seven LS seats in eastern Rajasthan. “I had given a statement before the PM came. I had said that if the (Dausa) seat is not won, I will leave the post of minister. Later, the PM spoke to me separately (during campaigning) and handed me a list of seven seats. So I worked on 11 seats – but harder on these 7 – and if the party loses on any of these then I will resign as a minister.”

The BJP lost four seats in eastern Rajasthan; apart from Dausa, the party also lost Tonk – Sawai Madhopur, Karauli – Dholpur and Bharatpur. Thus, mainly thanks to Congress-led alliance’s performance in Shekhawati region and eastern Rajasthan, the INDIA bloc managed to win 11 of the state’s 25 seats this year after drawing a blank in 2014 and 2019 LS polls.

As the news of his resignation went viral, Meena posted an update on Facebook Thursday morning quoting Ramcharitmanas: “Raghukul reet sada chali aayi, pran jaye par vachan na jaye”.

Reacting to Meena’s resignation, Congress state president Govind Singh Dotasra said, “If he stays put on his decision and does not withdraw his resignation then we salute him that he is keeping his word. All that false propaganda he spread against us, denigrated us, that is a different thing.”

Dotasra claimed Meena resigned as even he was not being heard in the government and the party. “If such a senior leader is not being respected or heard and has to meet the Chief Secretary and the CM to get his work done, then you can imagine the plight of the common man,” Dotasra said.