BJP leader Tirath Singh Rawat resigned as Uttarakhand chief minister on Friday after holding the post for less than four months.

Rawat handed over the resignation letter to governor Baby Rani Maurya past 11pm, hours after returning from Delhi where he was summoned by the top BJP leadership on Wednesday.

At 9.30pm, Rawat had told a news conference in Dehradun: “As the chief minister, I worked to control the second wave of Covid-19 and provided financial relief to people. I also extended relief to the tourism industry, which was hard hit during the pandemic.”

However, he had not responded to any questions about his resignation.

The Uttarakhand BJP legislature party will meet on Saturday to elect its new leader, who will be later sworn in as the next chief minister of the state where Assembly elections are due early next year.

In Delhi, Rawat, 57, had met Union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday and BJP national president J.P. Nadda on Thursday and Friday.

Earlier, Manveer Singh Chauhan, media in-charge of the Uttarakhand unit of the BJP, said in a release: “The meeting of the BJP legislative party will be held at state party headquarters at 3pm on Saturday. State (BJP) chief Madan Kaushik will preside over the meeting.”

“We have been informed that Union agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar will reach Dehradun on Saturday morning to be an observer during the meeting of the MLAs,” a BJP leader told reporters in Dehradun on Friday evening. “The party seems to have decided not to field Rawat in the by-election. After becoming the chief minister on March 10 this year, he is supposed to get elected as an MLA by September 10.”

Rawat will remain an MP from Pauri Garhwal as he had not resigned from the position, sources said.

He had replaced Trivendra Singh Rawat as the chief minister on March 10 and was preparing to contest from Gangotri or Haldwani seat, which had fallen vacant following the death of the BJP’s Gopal Rawat and the Congress’s Indira Hridayesh.