Nagendra resigns 25 days after returning to the Karnataka Cabinet

Karnataka Planning and Statistics Minister B. Nagendra resigned on Friday, 25 days after D.K. Shivakumar put him back in the Cabinet. He announced the decision at a press conference in Vidhana Soudha, then handed the letter to the chief minister. He also said he would quit as the Ballari Rural MLA and dared the BJP to face him in a by-election in the Scheduled Tribe reserved seat.

Shivakumar said he would take a call on Saturday after consulting the Congress high command. Nagendra is the first minister to leave the Cabinet since Shivakumar took office on 3 June.

This is the second resignation from the same file. Nagendra stepped down on 6 June 2024 as minister for Scheduled Tribes Welfare, Youth Empowerment and Sports in the Siddaramaiah government after investigators began looking at transfers from the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation. He returned on 3 August 2026 with the planning portfolio. The BJP and JD(S) treated the re-induction as a provocation and disrupted the monsoon session to demand his removal.

What the case alleges

Opposition parties have used two figures in public. One track, repeated in several Friday reports, puts about ₹89 crore as the sum moved out of a corporation account at Union Bank of India and then into other accounts. The Week and other outlets have also cited a ₹187 crore envelope for the wider Valmiki Development Corporation fund-misuse case. The difference matters. ₹89.63 crore is the transfer trail described in earlier charge-sheets. The larger number is the political headline for the whole investigation. Nagendra said on Friday that agencies had recovered the corporation's money and that he had not signed a note, given a direction, or written a file on the transfers.

He said his name was added to a second charge-sheet “in a hurry.” He asked why Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had not resigned when the same funds sat in a nationalised bank that reports to her ministry. He accused the governor of having “handpicked” him for prosecution and said he was being made a scapegoat because he is a Dalit minister. He used the word “Manuwadis” for his opponents.

Ministers Ajay Singh and Rizwan Arshad stood with him, as did Congress MPs Nasir Hussain and G.C. Chandrashekar. The tears were real enough for every camera in the room. The politics were not spontaneous. Nagendra had been in Delhi this week. Shivakumar had met Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders. The resignation followed those meetings.

What Shivakumar now has to decide

Accepting the letter is the easy half. The harder half is the Assembly seat and the message to the Congress's Scheduled Tribe base in Ballari. Nagendra is a four-time MLA. He has said he will resign the seat and fight again. If the party accepts both resignations, Ballari Rural goes to a by-election that the BJP will treat as a referendum on the Valmiki file. If the party keeps him as MLA and only drops the ministry, the opposition will say the clean-up stopped at the Cabinet door.

The BJP had already planned a padayatra to keep the pressure on. JD(S) had joined the floor protests. For Shivakumar, who is still settling a Cabinet after taking over from Siddaramaiah, the first ministerial exit is a test of how he handles a case that predates his tenure and a colleague who was brought back against that record.

Nagendra's own line was that he was leaving so the party and the chief minister's development work would not be embarrassed. That sentence is the one the Congress will use on Saturday. The sentence the BJP will use is simpler: he was re-inducted, the protests did not stop, and he is out again.

The facts that can be checked tonight are limited. The letter is in. The chief minister has not yet accepted it. The Ballari Rural resignation has been announced and not yet notified. The charge-sheet language has not been read out in full at the press conference. Saturday's consultation with the high command will decide which of those statements become government orders.