Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting M H Ambareesh today resigned from the Union ministry and Parliament. Ambareesh said his resignation was in protest against the Cauvery Water Tribunal award.This is the first political fallout of the verdict that most Karnataka politicians see as going against state interest. Ambareesh, who had earlier ruled out his resignation saying it would not solve the problem, said in Bangalore today, “I have faxed my resignation letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Speaker Somnath Chatterjee this afternoon from here.”The actor-turned-politician was inducted in the ministry only in December 2006. He represents the Mandya Lok Sabha constituency in Karnataka. “My resignation, both as MP and minister, has already gone,” Ambareesh, who had taken an active part in the Cauvery agitation on different occasions in the past, told agitated advocates. The Kannada film industry’s ‘angry man’, Ambareesh, has been under pressure from pro-Kannada organisations and the Kannada film world to take a plunge into the ongoing agitation against the Tribunal’s award. His constituency, Mandya, is located in the heart of Cauvery basin and this is his third term in the Lok Sabha. He said he would announce his future plans on joining the ongoing Cauvery agitation in a day or two.Ambareesh, who became a Lok Sabha member from the erstwhile Janata Dal in 1996 before crossing over to the Congress, had resigned as MP in 2003 to protest against the release of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu by the S M Krishna government on the directive of the Supreme Court. Ambareesh had then submitted his resignation to the Congress president and was prevailed upon not to insist on it.Meanwhile, a source in the Lok Sabha Speaker’s office said that since the resignation has not come in the acceptable format, it is invalid. As per rules, MPs cannot cite any reason for resignation. Congress sources said they will talk to Ambareesh and hoped to persuade him to take back his resignation.This is the second instance of a Union minister resigning over the Cauvery issue. The Late Vazhapadi Ramamurthy, who was Labour Minister in P V Narasimha Rao’s government in the early 1990s, had quit the government protesting against the interim award of the Cauvery Tribunal.
