Rajdeep Sardasai, the leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, has said he will not quit as chief minister of Gujarat on the grounds that his party has not shown any signs of winning the general elections.
“We are a minority party, we have not shown the leadership that we want to show.
I have a lot of faith in the people, the people of Gujarat,” Mr Sardasia told reporters after a meeting with senior BJP leaders.
Mr Sardasi said the BJP has not performed well in the Gujarat polls and it would take a long time for the party to recover.
The BJP is in its worst electoral fortunes in recent times.
Its candidate in the 2014 Assembly polls in the state was Laxmi Yadav, a former BJP MP.
The BJP has also lost four of its five Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat, including in the western state of Chhattisgarh.
Mr Sardesi has been Gujarat’s chief minister since 2009.
He is also the state’s finance minister and is expected to be named as the next chief minister soon.
The party has come under fire for a series of alleged misdeeds in recent years including for alleged irregularities in the allocation of public funds to its allies, for allegedly misusing public funds, and for being corrupt.