Chief Minister Ashok Chavan, the top elected official in India's Maharashtra state, offers to resign after media reports revealed that his mother-in-law and other relatives had cornered apartments in a building in Mumbai meant for wounded Indian war veterans and the widows of those slain in battle.
In a scandal that has rocked India's ruling Congress Party, nearly all the valuable units of the Adarsh Housing Society were sold for a song to a clutch of top politicians, their kin and retired generals.
The land in the upscale neighborhood in southern Mumbai was originally earmarked for a six-story building of apartments for disabled veterans, war widows and heroes of the 1999 Kargil conflict between India and Pakistan.
Congress party chief has ordered the country's finance and defense ministers to probe the matter, party officials said Monday.