Ambika offers to resign on Setu case

NEW DELHI: The Ram Setu affidavit took a political turn on Saturday with Culture Minister Ambika Soni offering to resign over the fiasco in the Supreme Court after a ministerial colleague from her party took potshots at her.

"I will not take even a minute to relinquish my post if my leaders (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi) ask me to do so," she told reporters.

She was asked to comment on the remarks in Kolkata of Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh that he would have resigned if he had been the Culture Minister. The affidavit was wrongly drafted by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) and the Culture Minister was not aware of it, he had said.

"I am not Jairam Ramesh," Soni shot back.