NEW DELHI - Home Minister Shivraj Patil has submitted his resignation over the attacks in Mumbai that killed nearly 200 people, the ruling Congress party said on Sunday."Shivraj Patil has tendered his resignation," Veerappa Moily, a senior Congress party leader, told Reuters. It was not immediately known if Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had accepted the resignation.
Indians blazed criticism against their political leaders on Sunday after the attacks in Mumbai that killed almost 200 people, saying their bickering and ineptness was at least partly responsible.
As commandos gunned down the last of the militants, TV channels were divided between covering the operations and an outpouring of venom against both the ruling Congress party-led coalition and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
"These are the people who are responsible for the system," author and columnist Shoba De, a Mumbai resident, said on one talk show.
"The city would not have suffered the way it has had it not been for the complete and total abrogation of duty and the kind of negligence we've seen, the kind of indifference we've seen."
Sunday newspapers were also unforgiving.
"Our politicians fiddle as innocents die," the Times of India said in a front-page comment.
It said while the attacks engulfed Mumbai and hundreds were held hostage, saving them took precedence.
"But today, as heaps of bodies lie in morgues...it is time to ask our politicians, are you going back to playing politics with our lives? Or are you going to do something worthwhile with yours?"
The Congress-party government was blamed for the loopholes that allowed the heavily-armed Islamist attackers to come across the seas to land in Mumbai. Others decried the Hindu nationalist BJP for seeking electoral advantage.
"There is rage," wrote a Mumbai resident in a blog published in the Indian Express. "A simmering against our so-called leaders. A simmering against the unpreparedness for this attack."
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