With assembly elections in Karnataka round the corner, senior Congress leader S M Krishna on Wednesday resigned as Maharashtra Governor after the party asked him to take the plunge in the fight against a resurgent BJP and a well-rooted JD(S).

Krishna, a former chief minister, met President Pratibha Patil [Images] at the Rashtrapati Bhawan and conveyed his decision to resign after just over three years in the gubernatorial post in Mumbai. A little later, he sent his resignation.

The 76-year-old leader, who was summoned by Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday night and was understood to have been told to get ready for the elections, had been expressing a desire to relinquish the post.

"I will go back to my roots in Karnataka," Krishna told reporters after meeting the President.

Though there was no official word from Congress on the new role for him in the state, sources said he would play a key role in the attempt to regain power.

Krishna's return to the Congress politics in Karnataka immediately sparked dissidence with his detractor and senior party leader C K Jaffer Sharief pointing out that it was the former Chief Minister under whose leadership the party's tally of seats had been reduced from about 170 to 65 in the assembly elections.

Krishna was Chief Minister during the last elections in 2004 when the party was nudged to the second position after BJP in a hung house.

Asked by reporters that how could the party choose him for leading it in the elections when he was blamed for the loss in the last elections, he shot back "why do you forget that I led the party to victory in 1999."