Bihar minister resigns after corruption charges

PATNA: Bihar's Transport Minister Ramanand Prasad Singh resigned from his post on Saturday, a day after it was known that he was named in a corruption case.

Singh submitted his resignation to Chief Minister Nitish Kumar who forwarded it to Governor R.S. Gavai, officials in the chief minister's office said, adding that the governor had accepted the resignation.

Singh was named in a charge sheet by the state's Vigilance Bureau on May 24, 1990 in a case, charging him with being involved in the purchase of pipes of inferior quality when he was posted as a fuel technologist at the Kanti Thermal Power Station in Muzaffarpur district. That was before he entered politics.

The Vigilance Bureau submitted the charge sheet in a special court here Dec 11, 1991.

The matter came out only after a vigilance court last month issued summons to him to appear before it.

After resigning, Singh told newspersons that the case against him was cooked up and it was a conspiracy of the previous government to defame him.

Singh was inducted into the state cabinet April 13 when Nitish Kumar inducted 19 new faces into his ministry.

It is the second time a minister in Nitish Kumar's cabinet has resigned after facing corruption charges. Jitan Ram Manjhi was forced to step down hours after being sworn in on Nov 24, 2005.