India railway minister quits amid graft allegations: TV channels
NEW DELHI | Fri May 10, 2013 8:58am EDT
Indian Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal (C) arrives to present the annual budget for the country's railway system, at the parliament in New Delhi February 26, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Adnan Abidi
(Reuters) - India's railway minister Pawan Kumar Bansal resigned on Friday, two Indian television channels reported, dealing a fresh blow to the scandal-weakened government as it limps toward elections.
The resignation came just days after police arrested Bansal's nephew for accepting a bribe. Officials in the ruling Congress party had said the case made Bansal's position untenable and that his resignation was inevitable.
Opposition demands for Bansal and another minister to resign had paralyzed parliament and forced the government this week to cut short its budget session by two days. The uproar dashed the government's hopes, for now, of passing more economic reforms and a vote-winning plan to give cheap food to 70 percent of the population.
(Reporting by Anurag Kotoky, editing by Ross Colvin)
