NEW DELHI/AHMEDABAD (Reuters) - India's interior minister faced vocal opposition calls to quit on Thursday as lawmakers accused him of failing to stop the worst Hindu-Muslim clashes in a decade that killed at least 665 people.
Outraged opposition lawmakers branded the government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), ``a disgrace'' and demanded that Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani resign over the religious violence in the western state of Gujarat.
Advani, 75, seen as a hawk and unofficial second-in-command to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, was expected to reply in parliament on Friday to accusations he delayed ordering out the army to halt the violence.
``You (Advani) have no moral right, authority, to remain in office,'' said Pranab Mukherjee, leader of the main opposition Congress Party in the upper house.
``Mr. Home Minister, what were you doing in Delhi when Gujarat was burning, when people were making phone calls and nobody came to their rescue?'' demanded Congress lawmaker Kapil Sibal as Advani sat in the upper house showing no expression.
The riots have confronted Vajpayee, 77, with his toughest crisis since he took office in 1999, forcing him to balance the demands of militant Hindus and his secular coalition partners.
The opposition lawmakers also demanded the firing of Narendra Modi, chief minister of the BJP-led government of Gujarat, over the state's failure to crack down swiftly on the roving Hindu gangs who burned many Muslims alive and hacked others to death.
``This was nothing but state-sponsored genocide of helpless minorities,'' Nilotpal Basu, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said. The lower house was adjourned until Friday amid opposition uproar.
In Gujarat, police said the state was peaceful apart from scattered arson and stabbings. But the death toll had climbed to 665 from 602 a day earlier as more bodies were found.
``Bodies are still being found in rural areas, particularly in fields, ponds and wells,'' a police official in Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of Gujarat, told Reuters. ``All the bodies are either charred or completely decomposed.''
He said that 607 people died during revenge attacks on the minority Muslim population after a Muslim mob set alight a train carrying Hindu devotees last Wednesday, killing 58 people.
RETURNING FROM TEMPLE SITE
The train inferno victims were returning from Ayodhya in northern Uttarpradesh state where thousands of Hindus have massed to build a temple on a site sacred to Muslims and Hindus.
In central Madhya Pradesh, police said they would shoot on sight gangs from neighboring Gujarat after hundreds of people brandishing swords and sticks invaded to attack Muslims.
They said there were no casualties but added troublemakers were believed to be hiding in the hills on the border.
About 150 opposition lawmakers led by Congress leader Sonia Gandhi held a vigil at the statue of independence leader Mahatma Gandhi inside the parliament compound to mourn the riot victims.
Congress spokesman Jaipal Reddy condemned as ``completely discriminatory'' a Gujarat state decision to give $2,050 compensation to families of those who died in the riots and double that to next-of-kin of those killed in the train.
In India's only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, shops and businesses closed in the main city of Srinagar to protest against the communal violence.
The local Chamber of Commerce in Srinagar condemned ``the inaction of the Gujarat government which...gave a long rope to Hindu fanatics to hunt and kill Muslims.''
In Bangladesh, police in the capital Dhaka used batons to break up nearly 2,000 radical Muslims who burned an Indian flag and cried slogans during a protest against the violence in India.
Vajpayee is under pressure to crack down on Hindu hard-liners in the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), which springs from the same ideological family as his own party to ease communal tensions.
The VHP has been threatening to start building the temple from March 15 next to the site of a mosque razed by Hindu extremists in 1992, triggering riots in which 3,000 died.
The BJP was already weakened by defeats in state elections, including in Uttar Pradesh, its traditional power base and home to Ayodhya, and juggling a military standoff with Pakistan.
The government also faces a tense situation in Uttar Pradesh, a communal tinderbox and now without an elected state government. The cabinet late on Thursday recommended federal rule after the failure of any party to form a majority government following last month's state elections.