India Government Officials

In India's highest-level political assassination in four years, Beant Singh, chief minister of Punjab state, was killed Thursday when a powerful bomb exploded as he got into his limousine. A Sikh separatist group claimed responsibility for the blast, which killed 12 others. The explosion occurred after Singh, 73, left his second-floor office in the civil secretariat in Chandigarh, the city that serves as Punjab's administrative capital. As the chief minister got into his car at 5:07 p.m.

The life of Phoolan Devi, "the Bandit Queen," was a losing battle against bad men, and even now that she is dead, two of them are fighting to take all she had. Three masked gunmen killed Devi, 37, last month at the gate of her official residence, a decaying bungalow with a high-class address. It was a modest perk for a member of Parliament who had made her name as a gangster demanding respect for the poor and the weak.

P.V. Narasimha Rao, a Gandhi family loyalist, was sworn in Friday as India's ninth prime minister. He named a top economist to his Cabinet to confront India's looming debt crisis. Manmohan Singh, who has headed India's federal bank and was negotiating a loan from the World Bank to tide over a $63-billion foreign debt, was among 54 Cabinet ministers sworn in along with Rao.

India's government said authorities in the southern state of Tamil Nadu violated the constitution and acted in revenge when they jailed a powerful politician, his son, two federal ministers and hundreds of local politicians in a bribery scandal. State opposition leader Muthuvel Karunanidhi, 77, was dragged from his bed, slapped and pushed by police during a Saturday raid on his home in Madras, the state capital. Hours later, Karunanidhi's son and hundreds of local leaders were jailed.

With one of the century's great freedom struggles nearly behind him, Mohandas K. Gandhi looked to India's future and glimpsed his own irrelevance. "Everybody is eager to garland my photos and statues," the Hindu leader said seven months before his assassination on Jan. 30, 1948. "But nobody wants to follow my advice." The frail, bespectacled prophet of nonviolent revolution still dominates India's consciousness.

New members of India's Parliament flooded into the capital Wednesday, humbled by final election results that punished all major political parties by denying any of them a majority victory, while the leaders of slain former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's Congress-I Party spent their third straight day behind closed doors, heading for a showdown today in their choice of the nation's next prime minister.

India's Hindu nationalist government resigned Saturday after losing a confidence vote by a single ballot, a margin that signaled continued political turmoil as Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi prepared to try to form the next government. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee gave his resignation to President Kocheril Raman Narayanan but agreed to stay on as caretaker until a new government is formed. "I accept the house verdict with all humility," Vajpayee said.

Nine people were killed in separate incidents of violence in the strife-torn northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, police said Thursday. Three state government officials were killed Thursday when suspected militants threw grenades at a government building in Srinagar, the summer capital of the state. Eight people were injured, police said in a statement.

Promising to "clean up the dirt," Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced an inquiry into a bribery scandal that has cost him two Cabinet ministers and spurred calls for his government to resign. Vajpayee said the inquiry, led by a sitting or retired judge, would probe the allegations raised this week by journalists who used hidden cameras and cash to expose corruption in India's arms procurement system.

Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes resigned as a corruption scandal involving a fake arms deal secretly filmed by journalists shook the government. Fernandes said the allegations against him were "completely false" and suggested that they had been made in order to undermine national security and morale. The scandal erupted this week when the Tehelka.

Former Indian film star Jayaram Jayalalitha took office as chief minister of the state of Tamil Nadu despite being convicted of corruption. Last year, Jayalalitha, 53, was found guilty of misuse of office and graft during her 1991-96 term as chief minister. She was sentenced to two prison terms. That led to her disqualification in legislative assembly elections last week, but her party won 197 of the 234 seats.

Promising to "clean up the dirt," Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced an inquiry into a bribery scandal that has cost him two Cabinet ministers and spurred calls for his government to resign. Vajpayee said the inquiry, led by a sitting or retired judge, would probe the allegations raised this week by journalists who used hidden cameras and cash to expose corruption in India's arms procurement system.

Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes resigned as a corruption scandal involving a fake arms deal secretly filmed by journalists shook the government. Fernandes said the allegations against him were "completely false" and suggested that they had been made in order to undermine national security and morale. The scandal erupted this week when the Tehelka.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee added six members to his Cabinet on Saturday, including one of India's most popular female politicians, just before two other ministers resigned to protest a hike in oil prices. Mamata Banerjee, the federal minister for railways, announced her resignation in the eastern city of Calcutta along with her Trinamul Congress party colleague Ajit Kumar Panja, the junior foreign affairs minister, United News of India reported.

A special court convicted former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in a vote-buying case, dealing another blow to the onetime political giant who quit in disgrace as head of the Congress Party in 1996. Buta Singh, Rao's home minister, also was convicted, the United News of India reported. Nine others were acquitted. Rao was found guilty of criminal conspiracy and bribery.

Separatist rebels killed a state government minister and four others with a remote-controlled land mine Sunday in Assam state, police said. Six others were killed in gun battles with rebels in the remote northeastern state, authorities said. The mine was triggered as Assam state Public Works Minister Nagen Sharma's car reached a village in Nalbari district west of Guwahati, Assam's capital.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee added six members to his Cabinet on Saturday, including one of India's most popular female politicians, just before two other ministers resigned to protest a hike in oil prices. Mamata Banerjee, the federal minister for railways, announced her resignation in the eastern city of Calcutta along with her Trinamul Congress party colleague Ajit Kumar Panja, the junior foreign affairs minister, United News of India reported.

For many Indians, their new prime minister is the best man for the job but comes from the worst party. Atal Behari Vajpayee has less than two weeks to resolve the contradiction, or he will go down in history as India's shortest-lived head of government, having foundered on the widespread unpopularity of his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. A bachelor and an accomplished poet and cook, the silver-haired, black-browed Vajpayee, 69, is the moderate face of Hindutva, or political Hinduism.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush was hit with a surprise quiz on foreign affairs and scored only 25%. The Republican presidential front-runner sat down Wednesday with WHDH-TV in Boston and was asked to name the leaders of four world hot spots: Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan. He was able to give a partial response to just one. That drew immediate criticism from the camp of Democrat Al Gore, which said the vice president could have answered all four correctly.

Nine people were killed in separate incidents of violence in the strife-torn northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, police said Thursday. Three state government officials were killed Thursday when suspected militants threw grenades at a government building in Srinagar, the summer capital of the state. Eight people were injured, police said in a statement.