NEW DELHI, 18 November 2003 — Union Minister of State for Environment and Forest Dilip Singh Judeo, who was caught on video allegedly taking a cash bribe, resigned yesterday in an attempt to control damage two weeks before elections in politically crucial states.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee accepted his resignation, a day after the Indian Express newspaper said it had a tape of him taking money from a businessman for a mining contract. Television channels on Sunday aired footage of the minister taking a wad of cash from a man called Rahul.
Vajpayee chaired a high-level meeting earlier yesterday called to assess the damage to the image of the government which came to power in 1998 on an anti-corruption ticket.
Later BJP President Venkaiah Naidu told reporters that Judeo had quit fearing the main opposition Congress would gain mileage over the scandal in elections due Dec. 1 in four states — Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. An assembly election is also due Thursday in the remote northeastern state of Mizoram.
The elections are seen as a litmus test for a national election due by October 2004.
Judeo, who was in the running to be the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate in his home state of Chattisgarh, denies the bribery allegation and told the Press Trust of India news agency that he had “resigned on moral grounds.”
Agriculture Minister Rajnath Singh made it clear that Judeo would remain one of the party’s principal campaigners in the state.
The Congress, which had earlier demanded Judeo be sacked, yesterday sought his arrest. “We demand that a case be registered immediately against Judeo under the Prevention of Corruption Act and he should be arrested like any other ordinary man,” Congress party spokeswoman Ambika Soni said. Soni and other Congress leaders were later arrested while trying to lead a protest demonstration to Vajpayee’s residence in New Delhi.
Vajpayee had said Sunday that Judeo would have to quit “if found guilty”.
“It is a policy of my government to carry out an open probe into all charges of corruption and an inquiry is already being conducted,” Vajpayee said.
But other figures in the BJP rallied behind Judeo. BJP spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said the scandal was a “conspiracy” by Congress. “Facing imminent defeat in the upcoming assembly elections in four states, it has resorted to this kind of tactic,” he said.
Former BJP President Bangaru Laxman, who was implicated in much the same way in a sting operation by tehelka.com, has asked the party to stand by Judeo. Laxman believes he was abandoned by the party after he was seen accepting bribes in the Tehelka tapes.
On Sunday evening, a group of people stormed the house of the Raipur correspondent of the Indian Express Ashwini Sharma, who acquired the videotape against Judeo. They shouted slogans against the reporter and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi and pelted the house of the correspondent with stones, rotten eggs and tomatoes.
