Forced to exit under graft cloud, Karnataka minister B Nagendra: Bellary brothers’ associate to Congress’s tribal face

A rising Scheduled Tribe (ST) leader and senior legislator in Karnataka, who was inducted as a minister for the first time in May 2023 when the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government was formed, resigned Thursday after being embroiled in a case of alleged misappropriation of Rs 94.73 crore fund from the Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation.

The 52-year-old ST welfare minister, B Nagendra, stepped down amid investigations into misappropriation of funds from the corporation under his ministry on the eve of top Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Karnataka.

Nagendra, who belongs to the sizeable Valmiki Nayak ST community, has claimed that he was not under pressure from any quarters to resign but was doing so to facilitate a fair probe into the case. He has also claimed he will return to the Congress Cabinet if the investigations being undertaken by the state Special Investigation Team (SIT) as well as theCBI prove that he is not involved in the alleged illegal diversion of funds from the corporation.

A four-time MLA from the Bellary region, Nagendra is no stranger to controversy. During 2008-13, when Nagendra was the BJP MLA from Kudligi, he was associated with the infamous Bellary illegal mining syndicate of former BJP minister G Janardhan Reddy. He then used to operate an iron trading firm, Eagle Traders and Logistics, which came under the scanner for the export of illegal iron ore during a probe by the Karnataka Lokayukta and the CBI.

In his election affidavit in 2023, Nagendra stated that there were as many as 26 cases related to illegal mining which have still been pending against him, including four CBI cases. He also declared Rs 17 crore wealth in his affidavit.

At the peak of the iron ore