New Delhi: Praveen Togadia, the fiery Hindutva leader who had been targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was on Saturday ousted from the Vishwa Hindu Parishad after an unprecedented election in which his nominee lost.

Togadia, who had recently alleged attempts to get him eliminated after he disappeared and was found unconscious in an Ahmedabad park, immediately announced an indefinite hunger strike.

"Today, the voices of crores of Hindus have been suppressed. I am no longer with the VHP but I will continue to fight for the Hindus, farmers, youths and workers. I will sit on an indefinite fast from April 17 in Ahmedabad," Togadia, who had been the working president of the VHP since 2011, said after the election results were announced.

He said the fast would be against the job and farm crisis and to press for the construction of a Ram temple as well as banning cow slaughter.

For the first time, the VHP held an election to elect its international president. In the past, presidents used to be elected by consensus. The motive of holding the election was to oust Togadia, who had emerged as the face of the Hindutva outfit.

Former Himachal Pradesh governor V. Kokje, the vice-president of the VHP, was elected president of the outfit. Togadia's nominee, the incumbent Raghava Reddy, lost.

The outcome had an immediate bearing on Togadia since the president nominates the working president and other office-bearers. Immediately after his election, Kokje pushed out Togadia and nominated a new working president, Alok Kumar.

The working president of the VHP is an important position since he virtually runs the organisation.

The effort to oust Togadia was linked to his repeated attacks on Prime Minister Modi. Sources close to Togadia said the top leadership of the RSS and the BJP was involved in the effort to edge out Togadia.

"The way he (Togadia) was targeting the Prime Minister had become unbearable. There was pressure from the top to get him removed," a VHP leader said. He alleged that Saturday's elections had been fixed. He did not elaborate but claimed "a big conspiracy".

Early this week, Togadia had held a news conference in the VHP office in Delhi and accused Modi of betraying Hindus over the construction of a Ram temple and smelled a conspiracy to agitate the community and shed their blood over the temple issue to win next year's Lok Sabha polls.

"Why should there be an agitation just to grab Hindu votes again and then throw Hindus in dustbins after winning the election?" Togadia had said. "They (the BJP) have neither built the Ram temple nor ushered in development," he had added, flagging joblessness and rural distress under Modi.