NEW DELHI, 25 July 2004 — Coal Minister Shibu Soren yesterday resigned following pressure from the Cabinet and ruling coalition allies.

A delegation of Soren’s party, Jharkhand Mukti Morch, met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and handed his resignation letter to him. Later JMM MP Sunil Kumar Mahato said that his party would continue to support Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government.

Soren has been evading arrest in a three-decade-old murder case. “People were waiting to see what ‘Guruji’ (Shibu Soren) would do. He has given his resignation. He will now go to Jharkhand and work out a way to face the case,” Mahato said.

In their meeting with Manmohan, the JMM lawmakers reportedly asked him to hold on to the resignation until a court decided on Soren’s appeal to quash an arrest warrant in his name.

Asked whether another JMM nominee had been decided to fill Soren’s slot, Mahato said a ministerial berth was not the party’s priority at present.

Soren is wanted by the police for his alleged role in leading a tribal mob on Jan 23, 1975, in the Muslim-dominated Chirudih village in Jamtara district of Jharkhand during a campaign to “drive away outsiders”. Ten people, including nine Muslims, were killed and a dozen houses set on fire in the attack.

But the JMM leader, who has been in hiding for about a week posing a predicament for the UPA government, remained elusive and let his party do the talking on his behalf.

One of the “tainted” ministers under unrelenting opposition attack ever since he joined the union Cabinet, Soren, who sports shoulder length hair and a long beard, is entangled in many cases, including allegations of murder.

Always a controversial figure, he hit the headlines in 1993 when his party voted in favor of the then Congress government of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Soren was accused of taking a bribe for the vote.

In what came to be known as the JMM bribery case, four MPs of the party, including Soren, were sent to jail.

Against the backdrop of growing unrest in Soren’s native Jharkhand state over his exit, the government reacted cautiously to the announcement that he had put in his papers.

In the past week, speculation raged about his whereabouts as the Congress-led government faced a relentless attack in Parliament by the opposition which accused it of shielding an “absconding minister”.

Asked about Soren’s whereabouts, his aide P.N. Pandey said: “He is safe wherever he is. He has not come out because he does not want to face the media before the Jharkhand High Court decides on the appeal to cancel the arrest warrant.”

He is reportedly inclined to resurface only after the court Monday decides on the plea to cancel the warrant.

After a fast track court issued the arrest warrant on July 17, a two-member police team from Jharkhand arrived in New Delhi Tuesday to arrest Soren.

A senior minister said Manmohan Singh as well as Congress president Sonia Gandhi were deeply upset by the unsavory episode and the opposition’s allegations that the UPA was shielding a minister who was evading an arrest warrant.

“The prime minister asked him to resign as it is the moral and ethical thing to do after a minister is served with a non-bailable arrest warrant, even though we know the case against Soren is plain political witch-hunting,” the minister said.

— Additional input from agencies