Mumbai: Two more Karnataka Congress legislators — M.T.B. Nagaraj and D. Sudhakar — on Wednesday submitted their resignations to the state Assembly Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar here, an official said.

“The two legislators submitted their resignations to the Speaker at his office in the state secretariat,” an official told IANS. The Speaker is, however, yet to accept the resignations.

Nagaraj, who represents the Hoskote Assembly segment in Bengaluru Rural, declared assets valued at Rs9 billion (Dh481 million) in his affidavit to the Election Commission for contesting in the May 2018 Assembly elections.

Sudhakar, a lawmaker from Chikkaballapur Assembly seat in the adjacent district, was recently made chairman of the state-run Karnataka Pollution Control Board, a post equivalent to a Cabinet Minister.

With Nagaraj and Sudhakar, the number of Congress legislators who resigned since July 1 has gone up to 13, including 10 rebels and suspended party member R. Roshan Baig on Tuesday.

If the resignations are accepted, the party’s strength in the Assembly will reduce to 66 from 79, including the Speaker.

According to sources, three to four more party legislators are likely to resign before the 10-day monsoon session of the state legislature begins on Friday.

The Congress on Wednesday evening protested the detention of senior Karnataka Congress leader and Minister D.K. Shivakumar, Maharashtra Congress Deputy Leader in Assembly Naseem Khan, Mumbai Congress leader Milind M. Deora and others by the police.

The Congress leaders were taken into custody outside Hotel Renaissance before they could intervene to resolve the political crisis in Karnataka. Ten rebel MLAs of Karnataka’s Congress-Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S) coalition government have been holed up at the Mumbai hotel since they resigned on Saturday.

The Mumbai Police, which said it had imposed prohibitory orders around the hotel premises, whisked them off in waiting vans to a guesthouse inside the University of Mumbai’s Kalina Campus.

State Youth Congress President Satyajeet Tambe said the police was adopting high-handed tactics and even caned the party workers outside the hotel.

“We are waiting outside the university guesthouse, but nobody is permitted to meet the leaders. Now, we hear Shivakumar may be sent back to Bengaluru in a private flight by the police,” Tambe said in a statement.

A delegation of city Congress leaders will call on Police Commissioner Sanjay Barve to lodge a protest against what they termed was ‘unlawful detention’ of the leaders.

Earlier, ex-Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam, who was also present outside the hotel, slammed the city police for stopping Shivakumar and others and later detaining them.

“I condemn the Mumbai Police for stopping Shivakumar. This is not the culture of Maharashtra to treat an honourable minister of a state,” Nirupam said.

Tagging Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Twitter, he wrote: “Don’t behave like this. Allow him to meet his colleagues who have been captured by the BJP in the hotel.”

Nirupam’s comments came after the police prevented Shivakumar from entering the hotel premises even though he had a suite booked there. The hotel cancelled the booking citing an ‘emergency’.

Undeterred, Shivakumar stood outside the hotel in heavy rain and interacted with the local media.

“I won’t go without meeting my friends. They will call me. Their hearts will give in. I am in touch with them already, our hearts are beating for each other,” Shivakumar said making an emotional appeal.

Calling the rebels his ‘brothers’ who loved and respected each other, he termed the crisis as ‘a family problem’.

The police action came on a letter written on Tuesday by the rebel MLAs to the Mumbai Police Commissioner pleading for protection from Karnataka leaders like Kumaraswamy, Shivakumar and others.

Shivakumar, however, denied the apprehensions. “There is no question of threatening anyone,” he said.