Unable to offset-delete in Empty Group

Symptom

This article explains a possible cause where the offset-delete request doesn't work even though the group is in an empty state. The condition looks like below:

$ rpk group describe panda
GROUP        panda
COORDINATOR  0
STATE        Empty
BALANCER
MEMBERS      0
TOTAL-LAG    0

TOPIC  PARTITION  CURRENT-OFFSET  LOG-START-OFFSET  LOG-END-OFFSET  LAG   MEMBER-ID  CLIENT-ID  HOST
foo    0          7               0                 7               0

offset-delete fails with below:

$ rpk group offset-delete panda --topic foo
foo   0     GROUP_SUBSCRIBED_TO_TOPIC: Deleting offsets of a topic is forbidden while the consumer group is actively subscribed to it.

A possible reason on why this could happen is the group member uses Manual Partition Assignment where it calls assign() instead of subscribe() when establishing a connection over the group. Whereas the committed offset is still tracked properly in the group, the group is marked as empty by design. 

Under this condition, the offset-delete request fails as such. This is a bug in Redpanda. 

Affected Products

Redpanda Self-Managed v25.1.7, v24.3.17, v24.2.x, and lower (inclusive)

Fixed Releases

Redpanda Self-Managed v25.1.8, v24.3.18, and higher

If you have any issues with this behavior, please report it to the Redpanda Support team.