Ramadhar Singh (left) and chief minister Nitish Kumar on the sidelines of Monday’s janata darbar. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, May 19: “Absconder” state minister Ramadhar Singh has resigned after an 18-year-old case that has communal connotations returned to haunt him.

Ramadhar, the cooperative minister, sent his resignation to the chief minister’s house late last night. Though Nitish Kumar was away in Delhi, he got Ramadhar’s resignation faxed to him, which he forwarded to Raj Bhavan. Governor Devanand Konwar accepted the resignation today.

Since Ramadhar is a BJP legislator, the portfolio will be looked after for now by deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi.

Sources said Ramadhar, 55, had to resign as pressure mounted from the Opposition as well as from Nitish whose stated policy is to keep out “tainted” persons from his cabinet.

Ramadhar, however, said he had resigned on his own. “There was no pressure on me. I have resigned on my own after finding that an Aurangabad court had declared me an absconder in 1995 in a case lodged against me in December 1992. I have resigned to avoid embarrassment to my leaders, Nitish Kumar and Sushil Kumar Modi,” he said.

The BJP leader passed the buck to his lawyer. “My lawyer ditched me as he did not inform me about the status of my cases. Otherwise, I would have surrendered long ago and prayed for judicial remedy. I will surrender now and I am sure I will come out clean,” he said.

That Ramadhar was an “absconder” was reported by The Telegraph on Tuesday, the matter having come up at the chief minister’s weekly janata darbar the previous day. Sources revealed that when Ramadhar’s issue cropped up at the Monday meet, Nitish refused to comment but conveyed it to the minister that he had to put in his papers.

Nitish has been a stickler for a clean image of his ministry given that the Lalu Prasad-Rabri Devi regime was dogged by charges of corruption in high places.

Nitish, the sources said, sent out the message loud and clear by not inviting Ramadhar to the cabinet meeting he presided over the next day and also to the bankers’ meet on Wednesday.

The sources also said that Ramadhar, in a last-gasp bid to save his chair, approached senior party bosses in Patna as well as in Delhi. But the BJP leadership did not think it wise to broach the subject with Nitish.

Ramadhar’s troubles date back to 1992. On December 17 that year, days after the Babri Masjid demolition, the BJP leader had made a speech at Madanpur hamlet in Aurangabad, which was considered “inflammatory” by the then district administration and prompted the Aurangabad sub-divisional officer to lodge a case against Ramadhar.

Ramadhar, a diehard Sangh parivar leader who has been winning the Aurangabad Assembly seat for the last four terms, delivered the speech defying prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC that had been clamped on the area in the wake of the Babri demolition.

Nitish, who is known to flaunt his secular image and has snubbed BJP stalwarts such as Narendra Modi for their perceived anti-Muslim stance, was learnt to be “extremely upset” when it was disclosed to him that his cabinet colleague was an absconder in a case that had communal ramifications.

Political sources said that by seeking Ramadhar’s resignation, Nitish had pre-empted the Opposition, which had sensed it finally had an issue on its hands. Leader of the Opposition Abdul Bari Siddiqui had led a delegation to the governor yesterday and demanded Ramadhar’s sacking.

Ramadhar is the third minister in nearly six years of NDA rule in Bihar to have been shown the door after figuring in criminal cases. Nitish had sacked Jeetanram Majhi and Ramanandan Singh after their names figured in corruption cases during his previous tenure. He, however, gave them back their posts after the court exonerated them of the charges.

But the re-induction of Ramadhar appears tricky given the nature of the charges against him. Moreover, he faces 11 other criminal cases, which he did not disclose in his affidavit submitted to the Election Commission ahead of filing his nomination papers last year.

“We will lodge a separate case of suppression of facts against him,” said Siddiqui.