3 India Ministers Forced to Resign : Asia: Criticism of scandal-tainted officials threatened prime minister’s party control. Cabinet reshuffle is expected.

In the ruling Congress (I) party’s most drastic reaction yet to its stunning defeat in state elections, three government ministers mired in corruption scandals were forced to resign Thursday.

A large-scale Cabinet reshuffle, and perhaps a reorganization of the party that governs the world’s largest democracy, were said to be in the offing and likely to be announced soon after the winter session of Parliament ends today.

The scandal-tainted ministers’ continued presence in office had come to be a grave embarrassment to the government of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, one the political opposition exploited with gusto to paralyze the Parliament for most of this week.

Rao had been reluctant to act against his three subordinates, despite official reports criticizing their actions and the urging of about 50 Congress party legislators who met with him this week to demand that the trio be forced out.

On Thursday, facing a wave of criticism that threatened his control of Congress, Rao reversed course and dropped Health and Welfare Minister Baburao Shankaranand, Minister of State for Food Kalpnath Rai and Minister of State for Rural Development Rameshwar Thakur from his Council of Ministers. An evening communique said India’s head of state, President Shankar Dayal Sharma, accepted their resignations.

“Had the prime minister taken this action before the recent assembly elections, we would not have faced such a battering at the hustings in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka,” one relieved Congress lawmaker told the United News of India agency.

Congress lost control of those two important southern states, as well as of the Himalayan state of Sikkim, in elections for state governments in November and December. The autumn rout left Congress anxious about its future and divided on how to stanch the ebbing of voter support before more state elections take place in February.

Rao’s highest-ranking minister, Human Resources Minister Arjun Singh, reportedly threatened to quit his government and party posts if Rao did not change his see-no-evil approach. He declined Thursday to confirm or deny rumors that he had already resigned from the Cabinet and the Congress (I) Working Committee.

“Whatever I have to say, I will say at an appropriate time,” Singh told reporters who came to his home.

Party spokesman V.N. Gadgil denied a power struggle was under way in the party that decades ago rallied Indians to demand their independence from the British crown, and that has since dominated this country’s politics. But some news reports said senior members of the government would soon be brought into leadership roles in the party, constituting a potential danger for Rao, India’s leader since June, 1991.

A joint parliamentary committee that probed a 1992 securities scam, the largest in India’s history, cited Shankaranand, then petroleum and gas minister, and Thakur, who was serving as minister of state for finance, for their roles in the illegal diversion of surplus government funds to the stock market.

The parliamentary panel delivered its report on the $1.2-billion scandal a full year ago, and Rao’s refusal to fire the ministers was cited by the opposition as proof of his government’s venality.