Mumbai: The Cauvery politics took a new turn with Kannada actor-turned-politician M H Ambareesh resigning as union minister of state for information and broadcasting. He also quit his Lok Sabha seat in protest against the Cauvery tribunal award.

Ambareesh, 56, who represented Mandya in the Cauvery basin for the third time in the Lok Sabha, had been inducted into the government only a few months ago.

"I have faxed my resignation letter to prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and to speaker Somnath Chatterjee this afternoon from here", he told reporters.

He said he had outlined the reasons that prompted him to quit in the wake of Cauvery tribunal''s final verdict, adding that he would announce future plans on joining the ongoing Cauvery agitation in a day or two.

This is the second time a union minister resigned over the Cauvery issue, after the late Vazhapadi Ramamurthy, who was labour minister in P V Narasimha Rao government, in the early 1990s.

He resigned from the government protesting against the Cauvery tribunal''s interim award complaining it was not enough.