Union Minister of State for Finance Gingee Ramachandran resigned on Friday night in the wake of the arrest of his personal assistant for allegedly accepting bribe for fixing an official's transfer.
Ramachandran sent in his resignation letter to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee late on Friday evening.
Earlier in the day, Prem Kumar, special judge of the Central Bureau of Investigation, remanded R Perumalswamy, personal assistant to Ramachandran, to ten days' police custody for interrogation.
The anti-corruption branch of the CBI had on Thursday arrested Perumalswamy for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 400,000 from Anurag Vardhan, a 1994 batch Indian Revenue Service officer, to help Vardhan get a transfer to Mumbai from New Delhi.
Judge Prem Kumar, who sent Perumalswamy to police custody till June 2, also remanded two other accused -- IRS officers Anurag Vardhan and S Padmanabhan, a project associate at the Centre for Atmospheric Science, IIT, Delhi and a friend of Perumalswamy -- to four days in police custody for interrogation.
Ramachandran, while speaking to reporters earlier in the day, said that he has no intention to resign from his post as his 'conscience was clear.'