NEW DELHI, 30 April — Indian Coal and Mines Minister Ram Vilas Paswan resigned yesterday to protest the Hindu nationalist-led government’s handling of religious violence in western Gujarat state, becoming the first minister to quit.

Paswan’s resignation, on the eve of a crucial opposition censure motion against the coalition led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), will probably embarrass the government more than threaten it politically.

“Ram Vilas Paswan has submitted his resignation over the government’s inability to curb violence in Gujarat,” his brother Ramchandra Paswan, who is also a member of his Lok Jan Shakti political party, told reporters. “Our parliamentary board decided to vote against the government in the censure motion.”

The announcement marked the first formal split in the fractious 20-party coalition’s ranks over India’s worst communal violence in a decade.

“It is not the beginning of the end, but it is the beginning of something which may happen tomorrow,” said political analyst Yogendra Yadav referring to the crucial opposition censure motion against the BJP-led coalition scheduled for today.

Even without the backing of the Lok Jan Shakti party, which has four seats in Parliament, the government still easily has enough support to win the vote.

And in any case, defeat would not force the government’s resignation as it is not a confidence vote.

But it would be an embarrassment for the BJP, still smarting from a string of regional election defeats and increasingly worried about its political isolation and damage to its international image caused by the violence.

More than 900 people, most of them Muslims, have died in killings in Gujarat which is also ruled by the BJP and is its last major state stronghold. The Gujarat crisis is the most dramatic since Vajpayee’s coalition came to power in 1999.

The coalition needs 272 lawmakers for a simple majority in the house. With Paswan’s announcement, 307 lawmakers were expected to support it on the censure motion and it looked set to boost its strength by another 13 through a regional alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

The BJP’s largest partner in the coalition, the regional Telugu Desam Party (TDP) with 28 lawmakers in the 545-member lower house, still has to make up its mind whether to support it.