B. Nagendra resigns after 25 days back in the Karnataka cabinet

B. Nagendra resigned as Karnataka's planning and statistics minister on Friday, 25 days after D.K. Shivakumar brought him back into the cabinet. He is the first minister to leave since Shivakumar took office on 3 June.

The trigger is the same file that forced him out two years ago. The CBI has chargesheeted him in the alleged diversion of funds from the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation. Governor Thawarchand Gehlot has given sanction to prosecute. Nagendra was ST welfare minister in 2023-24 when the transactions under inquiry took place. He first resigned from that post on 6 June 2024. Shivakumar re-inducted him on 3 August 2026 as planning and statistics minister. The BJP and JD(S) spent the monsoon session demanding that he go again.

Nagendra announced the decision at Vidhana Soudha with ministers Ajay Singh and Rizwan Arshad and MPs Nasir Hussain and G.C. Chandrashekar beside him. He was in tears. He said he had no role in the scam and that he was stepping down so the party and the government would not be embarrassed. He accused the BJP of targeting him because he is from a Scheduled Tribe community in Ballari Rural, an ST reserved seat he has won four times. He said he would also resign his Assembly membership and challenged the BJP to face him in a people's court in the constituency.

He asked Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah to let him contest Ballari Rural again so he could "come clean" politically. The BJP and JD(S) have already announced a 10-day padayatra from Raichur to Ballari from 1 September on the same case.

Shivakumar, speaking on Saturday, said Nagendra had handed in the letter to avoid embarrassment to the Congress. The chief minister said he would take a final decision after talking to the high command. He also said Nagendra was innocent and that the investigation reports, in his reading, did not support the allegations. That is a political defence, not an acquittal. The CBI chargesheet and the governor's sanction remain on the file.

The episode is a test of how Shivakumar handles the first corruption storm of his chief ministership. Re-inducting a minister who had already quit on the same inquiry invited the session-long protest. Accepting the resignation closes that front. Refusing it would keep the padayatra and the Assembly walkouts alive. Sending the letter to Delhi postpones the choice by a day.

Nagendra's offer to quit the seat is the sharper move. If the party accepts both the ministerial resignation and the Assembly resignation, Ballari Rural goes to a by-election and he can fight the charge on the ground he named. If the party keeps him as MLA and only lets the cabinet letter through, he stays in the House under a chargesheet. Saturday's high-command call decides which of those two versions Bengaluru wakes up to.