Kannada actor-turned-politician M H Ambareesh resigned as Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting and from his Lok Sabha seat in protest against the Cauvery Tribunal's verdict.
"I have faxed my resignation letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi and to Speaker Somnath Chatterjee this afternoon ", he said.
Ambareesh, 56, who represented Mandya in the heart of Cauvery basin for the third time in the Lok Sabha, said he has also sent a letter to the Prime Minister and the Congress President outlining the reasons that prompted him to quit, in the wake of Cauvery Tribunal's final verdict.
Inducted into the government only a few months ago, he said he would announce his future plans on joining the ongoing Cauvery agitation in a day or two.
This is the second instance of a union minister resigning over the Cauvery issue. Late Vazhapadi Ramamurthy, who was the labour minister in P V Narasimha Rao government in the early 1990s, had quit the government protesting against the interim award of the Cauvery Tribunal complaining it was not enough.
He could never come back to the government in the rest of its term.