Three sitting BJP corporators - Datta Kamat, former deputy mayor and Standing Committee member; Ramnarain Yadav, former chairperson of the Transport Committee; and Sherbahadur Singh, former member of the Transport Committee - had submitted their resignations to the party's Thane unit on Monday following the chief minister's statement on the Nand Lal Report which investigated corruption in the TMC.

The resignations, they claim, were tendered of their own volition though party sources say the BJP's state unit had urged all 11 BJP corporators in Thane to resign following the fracas over the no-confidence motion against Commissioner T S Chandrashekhar.

However, after all three resignations were forwarded to the BJP's state unit headed by President Suryabhan Wahadane, local leaders discovered that Singh had not beennamed in the Nand Lal report though Kamat and Yadav had indeed been indicted.

A red-faced Singh, who had clearly not read the sketchy newspaper reports on the ongoing Winter Session of the Assembly carefully, confirmed that he had resigned, though needlessly. The catch? Singh's wife Asha figures in the report!

Kamat, Yadav and Singh admitted to submitting their resignations and told Express Newsline that they did so on moral grounds after reading the newspapers. ``Perhaps this caused the confusion,'' remarked Veena Bhatia, BJP leader and chairperson of the civic Standing Committee. Local BJP leaders here, who are equally embarrassed, say they are now trying to retrieve Singh's resignation from the state headquarters.

Bhatia told Express Newsline that the trio had decided to resign purely on the basis of newspaper reports. ``Now that we have confirmed that Singh's name does not figure in the Nand Lal report, we shall urge the state president to delete his name from among the three corporators,''she said.

Asked about Govardhan Bhagat, who has also been indicted in the report, she said the city unit would not ask him to quit as he is a nominated corporator. Vidhyadhar Thannekar, president of the BJP unit in Thane said the party's state unit would take a decision only on Kamat and Yadav. ``Singh's inclusion was an absolute mistake,'' he said.