Home Minister Patil steps down after Mumbai Terror Attacks
(NewDesignWorld Press Release Center) 30 November 2008, Mumbai -- The political fallout from the terror attacks which claimed the lives of at least 183 people in Mumbai is starting to be felt.
Anger at the intelligence failure and delayed response to the attacks on two of the best-known luxury hotels and other landmarks in India's financial capital prompted federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil to submit his resignation.
The National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan also submitted his resignation.
Indian anger over alleged Pakistani links to the attacks are threatening relations with the two nations.
Newspaper editorials and commentaries blasted politicians for failing to prevent the attacks and for taking advantage of its fallout before elections on Delhi on Saturday and national polls due by May.
Indian officials have said most, perhaps all, of the ten Islamist attackers who held Mumbai hostage with frenzied attacks using assault rifles and grenades came from Pakistan, a Muslim nation carved out of Hindu-majority India in 1947.
India said on Sunday it had proof of a Pakistani link to the attacks, raising the prospect of a breakdown of peace efforts going on since 2004. The two countries have fought three wars since 1947.
India's minister of state for home affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal said: "We will increase security and strengthen it at a war level like we have never done it before."
Pakistan has also said it would move troops from its western border with Afghanistan, where security forces are battling al Qaeda and Taliban fighters as part of the US-led campaign against militancy, to the Indian border if tension escalated.
An official in Islamabad said the next one to two days would be crucial for the nuclear-armed neighbours' relations. Pakistan has condemned the assaults and denied any involvement by state agencies.
The three-day rampage and siege in Mumbai turned India's financial and entertainment hub into a televised war zone.
Elite Black Cat commandos killed the last of the gunmen on Saturday after three days of room-to-room battling inside the Taj Mahal, one of several landmarks struck in coordinated attacks on Wednesday night.
Hundreds of people, many of them Westerners, were trapped or taken hostage as the gunmen hurled grenades and fired indiscriminately. At least 22 of those killed were foreigners.
Nine gunmen and 20 police and soldiers were also killed. A tenth militant was caught alive.
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