Former prime minister H D Deve Gowda Friday resigned as Janata Dal-Secular national president.

In his letter to the JD-S vice president Bapu Kaldate, Gowda said it was an "irony of fate that being the national president of JD-S, I have to plead my inability to maintain the unity of the party in my own state".

"In the circumstances, it is not befitting and fair on my part to continue as national president," said Gowda in his letter, which he read out to reporters.

Gowda requested Kaldate to convene the meeting of the national executive committee on February 3 in New Delhi [Images] to make way for the election of a new president.

Gowda said he had been in political and public life for more than four decades and "yet I have never drifted away from the ideology and philosophy of my political belief. But the political developments which I am witnessing now in Karnataka is most unfortunate."

"I am aghast and pained by these developments. I am a believer of karma theory. This must be the result of the karma of my previous birth," Gowda said.

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