Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Monday announced his resignation as the board director of ARG Outlier Asianet News Private Limited, the company that runs news channel Republic TV. Chandrasekhar, who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party on March 12, said he had decided to step down as he is now a member of a political party and an elected MP.

His resignation from the company’s board was effective from March 31. He, however, still remains an investor in the company.

“Since I am now a member of the BJP, I believe it is in the best interest of Republic TV’s brand and team that I no longer serve on the board,” he said in a statement. Before joining the BJP, Chandrasekhar was an independent MP, even though he was the National Democratic Alliance’s vice chairman in Kerala.

Chandrasekhar wished Republic TV’s Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Arnab Goswami and his team success. “In my career as an investor and an entrepreneur, I have had the privilege of investing and building several successful brands and boards,” he said. “This MediaTech investment in Republic ranks high among my many investments, and it has been a pleasure to witness first-hand the amazing journey and growth over the first year of this exciting MediaTech brand and company under the leadership of Arnab and his team.”

In an interview to Scroll.in in 2017, the business tycoon had said the mandate in the newsrooms of media brands he invests in is that these organisations need to do everything to capture a large share of the market. “You have to do what you have to do to get a large share of the market – that’s my only brief,” he had said. “If that happens to be a slight leftist slant in a market that requires a leftist slant, they do that; if it requires a certain slant in another market, they do that.”

The BJP leader owns shares in Malayalam television network Asianet News, newspaper Kannada Prabha, TV channel Suvarna News and Radio Indigo.