Mumbai: Bollywood actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who has proved that he is one of the best actors in India by playing different roles, is making headlines for quite a time because of his personal life. The actor is involved in a legal fight with his wife and other family members and a lot of blame game was covered by media outlets from past three months about his life. Nawazuddin Siddiqui who enjoys a massive fan following has recently made a shocking revelation by hinting that he might leave acting and everything and become a monk.
Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who is promoting his rom-com Jogira Sara Ra Ra says that he would rather prefer quitting the industry than be stereotyped in a particular role. The actor said this during the trailer launch event of ‘Jogira Sara Ra Ra’. He also opened up about his 20 years of journey in the film industry and how he has evolved as an actor. His statement about a monk left his fans in shock and his future plans are being widely discussed on social media platforms.
The Motichoor Chaknachoor actor stated: “You learn everyday, it’s a new experience which helps enhance your craft. I can’t act the way I used to 20 years ago because today I carry the experience of those many years.”
He added, “It’s important to evolve constantly and with experience, your acting also changes. I can’t be stuck. If someone tells me that they’ll make me a superstar but I’ll have to do just one kind of role, I’ll shoot myself. I’ll quickly get bored, quit it and join some other field.”
In an interview with India TV, Nawazuddin Siddiqui also said, “A man advocates for himself throughout his life, becomes a judge for others, and gives judgment. I want to become a monk. He said, “Mai monk hota ofcourse. Mai shayad chala bhi jau, aapko pta bhi chalega. Haan mujhe bda acha lagega. Jahan par kuch ruhani ho, mujhe acha lagta hai hai wahan.”
Well, time will tell whether he will quit the industry and everything in future or not but currently his statement is what has made his fans anxious.
For the unversed, Nawaz’s upcoming film Jogira Sara Ra Ra which is directed by Kushan Nanday is all set to release on May 12, 2023.
Mumbai: Laying bare the differences within the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) supremo Sharad Pawar claimed on Tuesday that Uddhav Thackeray resigned as Maharashtra Chief Minister 10 months ago without consulting the two allies – NCP and Congress.
Pawar’s statement pertained to the political upheaval in the state in June 2022 caused by a split in the Shiv Sena following which Thackeray, the Shiv Sena President, resigned as the Chief Minister on June 28.
After Pawar’s comments to a private Marathi TV channel, Shiv Sena (UBT) President Thackeray and MP Sanjay Raut rushed to meet the NCP chief at the latter’s home late on Tuesday night.
What transpired in the 75-minute long meeting is still not clear, though the NCP promptly released photos of Pawar, MP Supriya Sule, Thackeray and Raut, all looking cheerful and relaxed.
“He (Thackeray) should have taken his supporting parties into confidence,” Pawar said.
Justifying his stand, Pawar pointed out that the three parties were jointly involved in all this, raising the issue 10 months after the MVA regime was unceremoniously toppled.
“If someone takes the decision to resign, he has the right. But the other partners in the alliance should have been consulted. Taking decisions without discussion has consequences. The fact that there was no discussion at that time cannot be denied,” Pawar added.
Interestingly, Pawar’s statement came ahead of the Supreme Court verdict on the Shiv Sena split and the related issues.
SRINAGAR: Smoking can have an adverse impact on health and smokers are at higher risk of developing lung cancer. But Ramadan is a hope for smokers to quit smoking as it can generate a will power among them, doctors said.
Dr Fayaz Ahmad Bhat Assistant Professor Department of General Medicine at SKIMS Soura said that besides having enormous health benefits, fasting is the best opportunity for smokers to quit cigarette smoking.
He said that diabetic patients, who wish to keep fast, must take special care as it is not advisable for them to take long food breaks and taking some frequent meals after certain durations helps in maintaining their blood glucose level smoothly.
“Diabetic patients must check blood sugar levels frequently during fasting. If someone feels symptoms of hypoglycaemia, an instant blood sugar test should be done to prevent any untoward complication, he added.
“Diabetic patients could have slow absorbing foods, which have low glycaemic index, before you begin the fast. These types of food keep your blood glucose level more stable and smooth during the course of the fast.” Dr Fayaz said.
He said that diabetic patients must avoid long brisk walks while they are fasting to avoid hypoglycemia and dehydration, however they can go for a walk once they break their fast in the evening.
He said that patients suffering from chronic diseases must consult their treating doctor before starting fasting as many decompensate heart liver and kidney disease patients have to take diuretic medicines leading to frequent urination which can lead to dehydration.
He said that the general population who are on fasting must stay hydrated, take enough proteins, eat fibre rich diet, and eat foods containing essential micronutrients like iron, calcium and vitamin B12.
Dr Irfan from GMC Srinagar said that Ramadan is the best opportunity for people to leave bad habits like smoking as fasting develops a sense of patience in the person.
Ramadan is an opportunity to make significant changes in one’s lifestyle and develop the resolve to make healthy living choices, he said.
“The diet should be simple and not differ too much from one’s normal everyday diet. It should contain foods from all the major food groups – like fruits and vegetables; bread, other cereals and potatoes; milk and meat; fish and dairy food alternatives; foods containing fat and foods containing sugar,” he added.
Overeating can not only harm the body, but it also interferes with a person’s spiritual growth during the month, he said. (KNO)
BERLIN — In an earlier life as a reporter in Moscow, I once knocked on the door of an apartment listed as the home address of the boss of company that, our year-long investigation showed, was involved in an elaborate scheme to siphon billions of dollars out of Russia’s state railways through rigged tenders.
To my surprise, the man who opened the door wore only his underwear. He confirmed that his identity had been used to register the shell company. But he wasn’t a businessman; he was a chauffeur. The real owner, he told us, was his boss, one of the bankers we suspected of masterminding the scam. “Mr. Underpants,” as we called him, was amazed that it had taken so long for anyone to take an interest.
Mr. Underpants leapt immediately to mind when, nearly a decade on, I learned that a sulfurous academic dispute had erupted over whether foreign companies really are bailing out of Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent international sanctions.
Attempting to verify corporate activity in Russia — a land that would give the murkiest offshore haven a run for its money — struck me as a fool’s errand. Company operations are habitually hidden in clouds of lies, false paperwork and bureaucratic errors. What a company says it does in Russia can bear precious little resemblance to reality.
So, who are the rival university camps trying to determine whether there really is a corporate exodus from Russia?
In the green corner (under the olive banner of the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland) we have economist Simon Evenett and Niccolò Pisani of the IMD business school in Lausanne. On January 13, they released a working paper which found that less than 9 percent of Western companies (only 120 firms all told) had divested from Russia. Styling themselves as cutting through the hype of corporate self-congratulation, the Swiss-based duo said their “findings challenge the narrative that there is a vast exodus of Western firms leaving the market.”
Nearly 4,000 miles away in New Haven, Connecticut, the Swiss statement triggered uproar in Yale (the blue corner). Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, from the university’s school of management, took the St. Gallen/IMD findings as an affront to his team’s efforts. After all, the headline figure from a list compiled by Yale of corporate retreat from Russia is that 1,300 multinationals have either quit or are doing so. In a series of attacks, most of which can’t be repeated here, Sonnenfeld accused Evenett and Pisani of misrepresenting and fabricating data.
Responding, the deans of IMD and St. Gallen issued a statement on January 20 saying they were “appalled” at the way Sonnenfeld had called the rigor and veracity of their colleagues’ work into question. “We reject this unfounded and slanderous allegation in the strongest possible terms,” they wrote.
Sonnenfeld doubled down, saying the Swiss team was dangerously fueling “Putin’s false narrative” that companies had never left and Russia’s economy was resilient.
That led the Swiss universities again to protest against Sonnenfeld’s criticism and deny political bias, saying that Evenett and Pisani have “had to defend themselves against unsubstantiated attacks and intimidation attempts by Jeff Sonnenfeld following the publication of their recent study.”
How the hell did it all get so acrimonious?
Let’s go back a year.
The good fight
Within weeks of the February 24 invasion, Sonnenfeld was attracting fulsome coverage in the U.S. press over a campaign he had launched to urge big business to pull out of Russia. His team at Yale had, by mid-March, compiled a list of 300 firms saying they would leave that, the Washington Post reported, had gone “viral.”
Making the case for ethical business leadership has been Sonnenfeld’s stock in trade for over 40 years. To give his full job titles, he’s the Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies & Lester Crown Professor in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management, as well as founder and president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit focused on CEO leadership and corporate governance.
And, judging by his own comments, Sonnenfeld is convinced of the importance of his campaign in persuading international business leaders to leave Russia: “So many CEOs wanted to be seen as doing the right thing,” Sonnenfeld told the Post. “It was a rare unity of patriotic mission, personal values, genuine concern for world peace, and corporate self-interest.”
Fast forward to November, and Sonnenfeld is basking in the glow of being declared an enemy of the Russian state, having been added to a list of 25 U.S. policymakers and academics barred from the country. First Lady Jill Biden topped the list, but Sonnenfeld was named in sixth place which, as he told Bloomberg, put him “higher than [Senate minority leader] Mitch McConnell.”
Apparently less impressed, the Swiss team had by then drafted a first working paper, dated October 18, challenging Sonnenfeld’s claims of a “corporate exodus” from Russia. This paper, which was not published, was circulated by the authors for review. After receiving a copy (which was uploaded to a Yale server), Sonnenfeld went on the attack.
Apples and oranges
Before we dive in, let’s take a step back and look at what the Yale and Swiss teams are trying to do.
Sonnenfeld is working with the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), which launched a collaborative effort to track whether companies are leaving Russia by monitoring open sources, such as regulatory filings and news reports, supported where possible through independent confirmation.
Kyiv keeps score on its Leave Russia site, which at the time of writing said that, of 3,096 companies reviewed, 196 had already exited and a further 1,163 had suspended operations.
Evenett and Pisani are setting a far higher bar, seeking an answer to the binary question of whether a company has actually ditched its equity. It’s not enough to announce you are suspending operations, you have to fully divest your subsidiary and assets such as factories or stores. This is, of course, tough. Can you find a buyer? Will the Russians block your sale?
The duo focuses only on companies based in the G7 or the European Union that own subsidiaries in Russia. Just doing business in Russia doesn’t count; control is necessary. To verify this, they used a business database called ORBIS, which contains records of 400 million companies worldwide.
The first thought to hold onto here, then, is that the scope and methodology of the Yale and Swiss projects are quite different — arguably they are talking about apples and oranges. Yale’s apple cart comprises foreign companies doing business in Russia, regardless of whether they have a subsidiary there. The Swiss orange tree is made up of fewer than half as many foreign companies that own Russian subsidiaries, and are themselves headquartered in countries that have imposed sanctions against the Kremlin.
So, while IKEA gets an ‘A’ grade on the Yale list for shutting its furniture stores and letting 10,000 Russian staff go, it hasn’t made the clean equity break needed to get on the St. Gallen/IMD leavers’ list. The company says “the process of scaling down the business is ongoing.” If you simply have to have those self-assembly bookshelves, they and other IKEA furnishings are available online.
The second thing to keep in mind is that ORBIS aggregates records in Russia, a country where people are willing to serve as nominee directors in return for a cash handout — even a bottle of vodka. Names are often mistranslated when local companies are established — transliteration from Russian to English is very much a matter of opinion — but this can also be a deliberate ruse to throw due diligence sleuths off the trail.
Which takes us back to the top of this story: I’ve done in-depth Russian corporate investigations and still have the indelible memory of those underpants (they were navy blue briefs) to show for it.
Stacking up the evidence
The most obvious issue with the Yale method is that it places a lot of emphasis on what foreign companies say about whether they are pulling out of Russia.
There is an important moral suasion element at play here. Yale’s list is an effective way to name and shame those companies like Unilever and Mondelez — all that Milka chocolate — that admit they are staying in Russia.
But what the supposed good kids — who say they are pulling out — are really up to is a murkier business. Even if a company is an A-grade performer on the Yale list, that does not mean that Russia’s economy is starved of those goods during wartime. There can be many reasons for this. Some companies will rush out a pledge to leave, then dawdle. Others will redirect goods to Russia through middlemen in, say, Turkey, Dubai or China. Some goods will be illegally smuggled. Some companies will have stocks that last a long time. Others might hire my old friend Mr. Underpants to create an invisible corporate structure.
A stroll through downtown Moscow reveals the challenges. Many luxury brands have conspicuously shut up shop but goods from several companies on the Yale A list and B list (companies that have suspended activities in Russia) were still easy to find on one, totally random, shopping trip. The latest Samsung laptops, TVs and phones were readily available, and the shop reported no supply problems. Swatch watches, Jägermeister liquor and Dr. Oetker foods were all also on sale in downtown Moscow, including at the historic GUM emporium across Red Square from the Kremlin.
Swatch watches, Jägermeister liquor and Dr. Oetker foods can all be bought in downtown Moscow, including at the historic GUM emporium across Red Square from the Kremlin | POLITICO
All the companies involved insisted they had ended business in Russia, but acknowledged the difficulties of continued sales. Swatch said the watches available would have to be from old stocks or “a retailer over which the company has no control.” Dr. Oetker said: “To what extent individual trading companies are still selling stocks of our products there is beyond our knowledge.” Jägermeister said: “Unfortunately we cannot prevent our products being purchased by third parties and sold on in Russia without our consent or permission.” Samsung Electronics said it had suspended Russia sales but continued “to actively monitor this complex situation to determine our next steps.”
The larger problem emerging is that sanctions are turning neighboring countries into “trading hubs” that allow key foreign goods to continue to reach the Russian market, cushioning the economic impact.
Full departure can also be ultra slow for Yale’s A-listers. Heineken announced in March 2022 it was leaving Russia but it is still running while it is “working hard to transfer our business to a viable buyer in very challenging circumstances.” It was also easy to find a Black & Decker power drill for sale online from a Russian site. The U.S. company said: “We plan to cease commerce by the end of Q2 of this year following the liquidation of our excess and obsolete inventory in Russia. We will maintain a legal entity to conduct any remaining administrative activities associated with the wind down.”
And those are just consumer goods that are easy to find! Western and Ukrainian security services are naturally more preoccupied about engineering components for Putin’s war machine still being available through tight-lipped foreign companies. Good luck trying to track their continued sales …
Who’s for real?
Faced with this gray zone, St. Gallen/IMD sought to draw up a more black-and-white methodology.
To reach their conclusions, Evenett and Pisani downloaded a list of 36,000 Russian companies from ORBIS that reported at least $1 million in sales in one of the last five years. Filtering out locally owned businesses and duplicate entries whittled down the number of owners of the Russian companies that are themselves headquartered in the G7 or EU to a master list of 1,404 entities. As of the end of November, the authors conclude, 120 companies — or 8.5 percent of the total — had left.
The Swiss team was slow, however, to release its list of 1,404 companies and, once Sonnenfeld gained access to it, he had a field day. He immediately pointed out that it was peppered with names of Russian businesses and businessmen, whom ORBIS identified as being formally domiciled in an EU or G7 country. Sonnenfeld fulminated that St. Gallen/IMD were producing a list of how few Russian companies were quitting Russia, rather than how few Western companies were doing so.
“That hundreds of Russian oligarchs and Russian companies constitute THEIR dataset of ‘1,404 western companies’ is egregious data misrepresentation,” Sonnenfeld wrote in one of several emails to POLITICO challenging the Swiss findings.
Fair criticism? Well, Sonnenfeld’s example of Yandex, the Russian Google, on the list of 1,404 is a good one. Naturally, that’s a big Russian company that isn’t going to leave Russia.
On the other hand, its presence on the list is explicable as it is based in the Netherlands, and is reported to be seeking Putin’s approval to sell its Russian units. “Of course, a large share of Yandex customers and staff are Russian or based in Russia. However, the company has offices in seven countries, including Switzerland, Israel, the U.S., China, and others. What criteria should we use to decide if it is Russian or not for the purpose of our analysis?” St. Gallen/IMD said in a statement.
Answering Sonnenfeld’s specific criticism that its list was skewed by the inclusion of Russian-owned companies, the Swiss team noted that it had modified its criteria to exclude companies based in Cyprus, a favored location for Russian entrepreneurs thanks to its status as an EU member country and its business-friendly tax and legal environment. Yet even after doing so, its conclusions remained similar.
Double knockout
Sonnenfeld, in his campaign to discredit the Swiss findings, has demanded that media, including POLITICO, retract their coverage of Evenett and Pisani’s work. He took to Fortune magazine to call their publication “a fake pro-Putin list of Western companies still doing business in Russia.”
Although he believes Evenett and Pisani’s “less than 9 percent” figure for corporates divesting equity is not credible, he bluntly declined, when asked, to provide a figure of his own.
Instead, he has concentrated on marshaling an old boys’ network — including the odd ex-ambassador — to bolster his cause. Richard Edelman, head of the eponymous public relations outfit, weighed in with an email to POLITICO: “This is pretty bad[.] Obvious Russian disinformation[.] Would you consider a retraction?” he wrote in punctuation-free English. “I know Sonnenfeld well,” he said, adding the two had been classmates in college and business school.
Who you were at school with hardly gets to the heart of what companies are doing in Russia, and what the net effect is on the Russian economy.
The greater pity is that this clash, which falls miles short of the most basic standards of civil academic discourse, does a disservice to the just cause of pressuring big business into dissociating itself from Putin’s murderous regime.
And, at the end of the day, estimates of the number of companies that have fully left Russia are in the same ballpark: The Kyiv School of Economics puts it at less than 200; the Swiss team at 120.
To a neutral outsider, it would look like Sonnenfeld and his mortal enemies are actually pulling in the same direction, trying to work out whether companies are really quitting. Yet both methodologies are problematic. What companies and databases say offers an imprecise answer to the strategic question: What foreign goods and services are available to Russians? Does a year of war mean no Samsung phones? No. Does it mean Heineken has sold out? Not yet, no.
This has now been submerged in a battle royal between Sonnenfeld and the Swiss researchers.
Appalled at his attacks on their work, St. Gallen and IMD finally sent a cease-and-desist letter to Sonnenfeld.
Yale Provost Scott Strobel is trying to calm the waters. In a letter dated February 6 and seen by POLITICO, he argued that academic freedom protected the speech of its faculty members. “The advancement of knowledge is best served when scholars engage in an open and robust dialogue as they seek accurate data and its best interpretation,” Strobel wrote. “This dialogue should be carried out in a respectful manner that is free from ad hominem attacks.”
With reporting by Sarah Anne Aarup, Nicolas Camut, Wilhelmine Preussenand Charlie Duxbury.
Douglas Busvine is Trade and Agriculture Editor at POLITICO Europe. He was posted with Reuters to Moscow from 2004-08 and from 2011-14.
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#Western #firms #theyre #quitting #Russia #Wheres #proof
( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Hyderabad: Sai Pallavi, the gorgeous actress who has wowed audiences with her exceptional performances, expressive acting, and mesmerising dance moves, has recently become the talk of the town. Fans have been waiting for news of her next project, and rumours about her quitting acting and focusing on her medicine profession have been circulating.
Despite all of the speculations, it has now been revealed that Sai Pallavi has given the go-ahead to star in a new Telugu web series, much to the delight of her fans. The series is created exclusively for the popular streaming platform Netflix by the most renowned director of Tollywood, Sekhar Kammula.
According to sources, the web series will be a powerful, female-centered story, and the director was quick to offer Sai Pallavi the lead role. Because of her immense talent and versatility as an actor, the young actress was said to be the ideal fit for the role. While there has been no official announcement, fans are eagerly awaiting more information from the actress.
Sai Pallavi has long been a fan favourite due to her genuine performances, emotional depth, and enthralling screen presence. Her previous films, including Fidaa, Love Story, Virata Parvam, and Gargi, were all critical and commercial successes, demonstrating her exceptional talent.
Many were surprised to learn that she would be starring in a web series, especially given her recent absence from the big screen. Rumors have circulated that she may be leaving the film industry to pursue her medical career, but this exciting development has given fans new hope.
As the buzz surrounding the web series grows, audiences can expect a captivating and engaging viewing experience. With Sai Pallavi’s unique talent and the director’s vision, the web series is certain to be a must-see for all Telugu film fans. It’s unclear how Sai Pallavi will bring her trademark authenticity and emotional depth to this new medium, but one thing is certain that fans are in for a treat.
Thiruvananthapuram: Hailing Rahul Gandhi’s determination, AICC general secretary K C Venugopal on Saturday said during the initial days of the Bharat Jodo Yatra, there was a delicate situation in which the former Congress chief faced severe knee problems that forced him to think about whether he should be replaced by someone else.
Venugopal, a close confidante of Rahul, said the predicament had even forced Priyanka Gandhi to tell him that her brother might be giving up the nationwide foot march due to the severe pain and hand over the baton of the yatra to senior Congress leaders.
“His knee pain had aggravated when the yatra entered Kerala on the third day of its commencement from Kanyakumari. One night, he called me to tell (me) about the severity of his knee pain and suggested to carry out the campaign by replacing him with any another leader,” the senior Congress leader said during a function organised at KPCC headquarters here in the evening to honour the Bharat Jodo yatris from Kerala.
Narrating the sequence of events that he had faced when the yatra that began from Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu on September 7, 2022 entered Kerala, Venugopal said a yatra without Rahul Gandhi was unimaginable for the Congress workers and leaders.
“Then came Priyanka Gandhi’s call to inform about the severity of knee pain Rahul suffers. She even thought of suggesting to hand over the campaign to other senior leaders,” the AICC general secretary said, adding those were anxious moments wherein he stood with folded hands, praying for divine intervention.
Finally, a physiotherapist suggested by Rahul Gandhi joined his medical team and treated him. “With God’s grace, his pain was cured,” Venugopal told the gathering at the function also attended by senior party leaders including A K Antony.
The yatra led by Rahul Gandhi had entered Kerala on September 10 and it traversed through the state for 19 days.
The Bharat Jodo Yatra had ended on January 30 in an opposition show of strength with leaders of several parties joining Congress leader Rahul Gandhi as he capped his ambitious 145-day journey that covered some 4,000 kilometres from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.
Mumbai: Bollywood actor Imran Khan who was not seen on the big screen for years made a rare public appearance in Mumbai with his rumoured girlfriend Lekha Washington. The duo were spotted holding hands recently in the city. It is reported that Imran fell in love with South actress Lekha Washington in 2013. The two worked together in the film Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola.
It is rumoured that Imran Khan and his wife Avantika Malik live separately since 2019. The couple is co-parenting a baby girl Imara Malik Khan. The couple dated for eight years and tied the knot in 2011. Imran, who is Aamir Khan’s nephew, appeared in several Bollywood films.
Imran;’s girlfriend Lekha’s ex-husband Pablo Chatterji and Imran were close friends but it is rumoured that all is not well between them as Imran and Lekha are dating each other now. Imran and his wife Avantika Malik have been separated because of the former’s alleged affair with Lekha.
Imran made his acting debut with the 2008 film Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and was last seen in the 2015 movie Katti Batti. Imran’s other movies include Mere Brother Ki Dulhan, Delhi Belly and I Hate Love Storys while Lekha predominantly appears in Tamil and Telugu films.
Hyderabad: Former Odisha chief minister and nine-term Lok Sabha MP from tribal-dominated Koraput seat, Giridhar Gamang, joined the KCR-led BRS (Bharat Rashtra Smaithi) party on Friday.
Several other ex-MLAs also joined the BRS in the presence of Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao.
Giridhar on Wednesday resigned from the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), alleging that he faced ‘humiliation’ in the saffron party.
Gridhar was accompanied by his son Sishir Gamang, who also quit the saffron party alleging that his father was not given adequate importance in the state unit of the BJP.
Gamang who had met Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on January 13, will likely be leading the BRS party in Odisha in the 2024 elections as its state president.
“I can tolerate insult, but not humiliation. Moreover, I was overlooked in the party,” Gamang told reporters on Wednesday, adding that he was quitting the party with a heavy heart.
The veteran tribal leader, however, thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah for their support.
Gamang was elected to Lok Sabha from the Koraput Lok Sabha seat from 1972 to 1998 and again in 2004.
He could not contest the 1999 polls as he was the Odisha chief minister then. His wife Hema Gamang had won the seat that year.
Giridhar had earlier quit the Congress party and joined the BJP in 2015.
In the resignation letter to BJP national president J P Nadda, Gamang said: “As you are aware, I joined the BJP voluntarily, at my free will, without any pre-condition in 2015. I am thankful to Shri Narendra Modi, Hon’ble Prime Minister and Shri Amit Shah, Home Minister, the then President of the Party for clarifying on the floor of the Parliament on my Voting in 1999.”
“However, I realised that I am unable to discharge my political, social and moral duty to my people in Odisha during the last several years. Hence, I tender my resignation from the primary membership of the BJP with immediate effect. Please accept the same,” the letter read.
Reacting to the development, BJP state president Samir Mohanty said, “He (Gamang) is a respected politician. He was never humiliated in the party. He was a member of the state executive as well as the highest core committee of the party. He had extensively campaigned for four days in Padampur bypoll. However, he is free to choose any party of his choice.” Senior BJP leader Dilip Mohanty said Gamang’s resignation will not affect the party’s electoral prospects
