Mumbai: Maharashtra advocate general Shreehari Aney resigned on Tuesday following a controversy over his support for statehood for Vidarbha region. Aney met governor C. Vidyasagar Rao in the morning and submitted his resignation.
In a statement released to media, Aney denied he was asked to resign by the chief minister. He also said that shooting the messenger does not solve the problem and there was a clear pattern in the continuous disruption of the state legislature over his statement.
“There are two reasons for my resignation. The first has to do with conflict of duty. The second concerns institutional stability,” Aney said. He said he believed the advocate general to be first lawyer of the people of the state and not a government pleader. “Based on this belief, as advocate general, I considered it my duty to place the interest of the people above the interest of the governmental machinery,” the statement read. “The second reason is of institutional stability. In spite of the fact that my stand on Vidarbha’s statehood is well known, it became the reason for disruption of the state’s legislature for two weeks in the winter session,” Aney says adding that a section of the legislators chose to make his statement an issue to stall the current budget session also.
“Since I shall not stop from voicing my demand for Vidarbha’s statehood and the legislators will not stop from using it as a ready excuse to stall the working of the legislature, one of us has to step back,” Aney says in his statement.
The Maharashtra legislature on Monday saw protests by the opposition Congress-Nationalist Congress Party and BJP’s ally Shiv Sena over Aney’s support to statehood for Vidarbha and Marathwada. Even after his resignation, the Shiv Sena has demanded that Aney be booked for sedition.
