Union Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor has resigned. <br/><br/>Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh has forwarded his resignation to the President for acceptance. <br/><br/>The resignation came after a marathon discussion of Congress leadership including Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and the Congress President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi last evening. <br/><br/>During the day, Mr. Tharoor had a 45 minutes meeting with the Prime Minister and is believed to have explained his position in a controversy relating to Kochi Cricket team ownership of the Indian Premier League. <br/><br/>Mr. Tharoor held several meetings with the top Congress leaders during the last couple of days. <br/><br/>Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had told mediapersons accompanying him during his two-nation visit to US and Brazil that he will take a decision on the issue after knowing the fact. <br/><br/>Mr. Tharoor on Friday made a statement in the Lok Sabha brushing aside all allegations levelled against him. <br/><br/>The proceedings in the two houses of Parliament were rocked by the controversy on Friday with both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha adjourned for the day. <br/><br/>The opposition was demanding removal of the Minister from the Government. <br/><br/>AIR correspondent reports that with the resignation of Mr. Tharoor from the Union Council of Ministers, the stalemate between the Government and the Opposition has come to an end and it is expected that Parliament will take up normal business including the passage of Finance Bill from today onwards. <br/><br/>Opposition hailed Shashi Tharoor's resignation as Union Minister.<br/><br/>BJP spokesperson Nirmala Sitharaman said his position has become "untenable" in the wake of the Kochi IPL ownership controversy it was only appropriate that he resigned. <br/><br/>CPI leader D Raja said that the exit of Tharoor became inevitable and Congress should have taken a decision long back when the controversy exploded. <br/><br/>Congress Spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said the party has nothing to do with the IPL. It was an issue of an individual minister. <br/><br/>The Party has acted with utmost restraint. It went through a very decent process by which it collected facts and a final view was taken by the Prime Minister. <br/><br/>In a related development, one of the stakeholders of the Kochi IPL franchise, Sunanda Pushkar quit Rendezvous Sports World which is a stakeholder in IPL Kochi after she decided to return her free equity worth Rs 70 crore to the franchise. <br/><br/>The 48-year-old business executive, based in Dubai, decided to disassociate from the franchise in the wake of allegations that Mr Tharoor had misused his office to secure the bonanza for Sunanda.<br/><br/>Rendezvous is understood to have accepted her resignation. <br/><br/>Sunanda's decision to quit came after her dramatic announcement that she was voluntarily surrendering her equity to IPL Kochi. <br/><br/>Meanwhile IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi exuded confidence of resolving the controversy over ownership of Kochi franchise saying he had no personal issue either with the team owners or Mr Shashi Tharoor. <br/><br/>Modi, who is in Dubai to attend the International Cricket Council's (ICC) quarterly meeting on behalf of BCCI President Shashank Manohar, said that Kochi team will continue and contribute to the success of IPL.