Congress leader and former Union minister P Chidambaram on Thursday said the resignation of Kashmiri bureaucrat Shah Faesal from the Indian Administrative Services is an “indictment” of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre.

In his statement after resigning, Faisal had cited “unabated killings in Kashmir” and a growing culture of “intolerance and hate in the name of hyper-nationalism”. Faesal is likely to join politics.

On Thursday, Chidambaram tweeted: “Though sad, I salute Mr Shah Faesal. Every word of his statement is true and is an indictment of the BJP government. The world will take note of his cry of anguish and defiance.”

In 2009, Faesal had become the first Kashmiri to top the Union Public Services Commission examination. He is a former managing director of Jammu and Kashmir State Power Development Corporation.

Faesal said he was resigning in protest against the “marginalisation and invisiblization of around 200 million Indian Muslims at the hands of Hindutva forces reducing them to second-class citizens”. He also pointed out the “subversion of public institutions like Reserve Bank of India, Central Bureau of Investigation and National Investigation Agency”, and said it has the “potential to decimate the Constitutional edifice of this country and it needs to be stopped”.

“I wish to reiterate that voices of reason in this country cannot be muzzled for long and the environment of siege will need to end if we wish to usher in true democracy,” Faesal said.

Faesal recently returned to India after a stint at the Harvard Kennedy School in the United States.