Shivakumar accepts B. Nagendra's resignation after 25 days in the Cabinet

Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar has accepted Planning and Statistics Minister B. Nagendra's resignation and said he will send it to Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot. Nagendra announced the decision on Friday at Vidhana Soudha, 25 days after he was sworn into Shivakumar's Cabinet on 3 August. He is the first minister to leave since Shivakumar took office on 3 June.

The trigger is the case around the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation. The CBI has filed a chargesheet over alleged diversion of ST welfare funds from Nagendra's earlier stint as Scheduled Tribes Welfare minister in 2023-24. The governor had sanctioned his prosecution. Nagendra said he had no role in the alleged Rs 89-crore scam and that he was stepping down so the party and the government would not face daily embarrassment. He also said he would resign his Ballari Rural (ST) Assembly seat and challenged the BJP to face him there in a by-election he framed as a people's court.

This is his second exit over the same file. He resigned on 6 June 2024 from the Siddaramaiah Cabinet. The Congress brought him back after Shivakumar became chief minister. The BJP and JD(S) answered the reinduction with a threat of a ten-day padayatra from Raichur to Ballari starting 1 September. They spent the monsoon session on the allegation and called Friday's resignation a victory.

Shivakumar told reporters on Saturday that Nagendra had quit to protect the party, that the minister was innocent, and that a final call would follow talks with the Congress high command. By evening the acceptance was public and the lobbying for the vacancy had started. Party sources told The Hindu that one of two open Cabinet seats is likely to go to a woman. Sandur MLA E. Annapurna Tukaram, wife of Ballari MP E. Tukaram and from the same district and ST community, is in that conversation. The other seat has drawn Basavaraj Shivannanavar, the Byadgi MLA backed by Siddaramaiah. Siddaramaiah is also reported to have resisted the induction of MLC Gayatri Shanthegowda and to prefer a Kuruba leader from north Karnataka.

Nagendra is a four-time MLA. He used the press conference to call the BJP anti-Dalit, anti-Adivasi and anti-minority, and to say he had been painted guilty because of his community. Ministers Ajay Singh and Rizwan Arshad and MPs Nasir Hussain and G.C. Chandrashekar stood with him. The legal case does not pause because the political chair is empty. The CBI chargesheet remains. The Assembly resignation, if filed, would set up the Ballari Rural by-election he says he wants.

For the Congress in Karnataka the arithmetic is immediate. A Cabinet that just changed hands in June now has two holes and a faction map that still runs through Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar. For the BJP the padayatra can be recast as a celebration or kept as pressure for a deeper probe. The date that matters next is the governor's formal acceptance and, after that, whoever takes the oath in Nagendra's place.