May 24, 2003	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 21,1424

NEW DELHI, May 23: India’s Hindu-nationalist coalition government was rocked by the resignation of two ministers on Friday evening, a day before a planned cabinet reshuffle.

India’s junior Finance Minister Gingee Ramachandran submitted his resignation following the arrest of one of his aides for taking a bribe to help an official to secure a plum posting, an official said.

Federal detectives had this week arrested Perumal Swamy, an assistant to Ramachandran, for allegedly receiving 400,000 rupees (8,330 dollars) from a revenue department official to secure him a posting of his choice.

Within minutes of Ramachandran’s resignation, Agriculture Minister Ajit Singh followed suit, albeit for a different reason — reportedly because of frictions between his regional RLD party and the ruling federal BJP party.

The resignation of Ramachandran overshadowed that of Singh as the “bribes-for-transfer” scandal has embarassed Vajpayee’s government and likely to tarnish its image, regardless of the cabinet makeover, observers say.

The ruling BJP-led coalition has tried to project itself as a “corruption-free” administration, but a series of scandals has battered its image over the last two years.

The finance ministry came under a cloud last year when a joint parliamentary committee held it responsible for not acting fast enough to prevent a scam, which triggered a stock market collapse in 2001.

And in 2001, Defence Minister George Fernandes was forced to quit after a sting operation by two web journalists showed senior defence and army officials accepting bribes for speeding up arms procurement deals.

Fernandes later rejoined the cabinet.

Last year, The Indian Express newspaper published a series of exposes of alleged nepotism in the allocation of lucrative petrol pumps and gas agencies to relatives and friends of leaders in Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

Despite the resignation of the two ministers, the reshuffle of the cabinet was not likely to result in drastic changes in the ministerial council. —AFP