Gail Alexan­der

Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) dis­ci­pli­nary com­mit­tee mem­ber Dr Sub­ash Shar­ma, who re­signed from the par­ty yes­ter­day, had ini­ti­at­ed le­gal ac­tion ear­li­er this year against out­go­ing In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion mem­ber Dr Shelly Anne Lalchan.

Shar­ma con­firmed both de­vel­op­ments yes­ter­day. On his res­ig­na­tion, he said PNM leader Kei­th Row­ley's sit­u­a­tion in the Email­gate is­sue was the last straw for him.

He is clin­i­cal co-or­di­na­tor/lec­tur­er of the Op­tom­e­try Pro­gramme at UWI's School of Op­tom­e­try/Vi­su­al Sci­ences.

Shar­ma had ini­ti­at­ed ac­tion against Lalchan, who is an opthal­mol­o­gist, in Feb­ru­ary over al­leged defama­tion in re­la­tion to the Na­tion­al Eye Sur­vey of T&T (NESTT) project. Lalchan re­signed as a mem­ber of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on Wednes­day.

Shar­ma has de­clined de­tails on the mat­ter which is still in court but it is un­der­stood that when the mat­ter oc­curred it was con­veyed to UWI of­fi­cials and that al­so was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the Pres­i­dent's Of­fice. There was no com­ment from Pres­i­dent's House on this, how­ev­er.

Shar­ma joined the PNM in 2006 and was a high-pro­file mem­ber un­der the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion. He was PNM's St Au­gus­tine can­di­date in 2010, St Au­gus­tine PRO, elec­tion of­fi­cer at var­i­ous points and co-or­di­na­tor of the par­ty's Ch­agua­nas East and West ar­eas.

His res­ig­na­tion, how­ev­er, is mere­ly an of­fi­cial part­ing of the ways since Shar­ma had been es­tranged from PNM since the 2014 in­ter­nal lead­er­ship con­test when he backed con­tender Pen­ny Beck­les-Robin­son against Row­ley as part of the "Pre­serve the Bal­isi­er" pres­sure group.

Shar­ma was among sev­er­al of her sup­port­ers who crit­i­cised Row­ley's lead­er­ship.

In his res­ig­na­tion let­ter to PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford, Dr Shar­ma said: "I re­gret to in­form you I have de­cid­ed to re­sign from the PNM be­cause the par­ty does not rep­re­sent the ideals that I hold very dear, which at­tract­ed me to be­come a mem­ber.

"How­ev­er, the lat­est blow to the par­ty due to his ir­ra­tional and cav­a­lier pros­e­cu­tion of the Email­gate af­fair, where he at­tempt­ed to mis­lead our sa­cred Par­lia­ment and de­fame its ho­n­ourable mem­bers, in ad­di­tion to oth­er er­rors of judg­ment (Sec­tion 34, mul­ti­ple "no-con­fi­dence" mo­tions, run­ning from Par­lia­ment), have shown he can­not be trust­ed any­more with the lead­er­ship of the par­ty and def­i­nite­ly not with the prime min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of our coun­try."

Shar­ma al­so said Row­ley's ill-ad­vised as­so­ci­a­tion with the "Round­table" at this time was an­oth­er cause for con­cern.

"He must go now. I sin­cere­ly hope the par­ty can over­come its present dif­fi­cul­ties and take its right­ful place again to of­fer our na­tion an hon­est op­tion in our democ­ra­cy," he added.

On his fu­ture, Shar­ma said: "I'm re­main­ing very ac­tive po­lit­i­cal­ly and will con­tin­ue hav­ing talks with var­i­ous groups but I have made no de­ci­sion. Ide­al­ly, I pre­fer an in­de­pen­dent line to see how best to serve T&T."