Patil, who had offered to step down at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting last night, sent his resignation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this morning, sources said.

The 74-year-old Patil was inducted into the Union Cabinet despite his defeat from Latur in Maharashtra in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls and has been a target of the opposition as also the detractors within the party over his handling of the internal security situation in the country.

Patil had told the CWC meeting that as the Home minister he "takes the responsibility and whatever the CWC decides, I am ready to do", the sources said.

Patil's remarks came in the wake of criticism by several leaders, including Union Ministers P Chidambaram, Kamal Nath, Kapil Sibal and H R Bhardwaj, they said.

The refrain of these leaders at the meeting was that a strong action is needed in the wake of the Mumbai terror strikes and accountability has to be ensured at the higher as well as lower levels.

Patil, who has been in public life for over four decades, was brought into the Manmohan Singh Cabinet as he was considered a complete Gandhi loyalist and Sonia Gandhi had turned down repeated demands for his ouster from the government.

Patil was also one of the serious candidates of the Congress for the post of the President last year after the tenure of A P J Abdul Kalam got over. But, the Left parties, which were supporting the government from outside, had put their foot down on such a proposal.

Patil was criticised for his statements whenever terrorist strikes took place and he especially came under media scrutiny for his sartorial fetish on the day serial bomb blasts hit Delhi in September this year.

Born at Chakur in Latur district on October 12, 1935, Patil was educated at Osmania University and Bombay University. After graduating in Science, he completed LLM and practised Law.

Patil had risen to the post of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha when the P V Narasimha Rao government was in power between 1991 and 1996.

He was first elected to the Latur Municipality as its President in 1967. He became a Member of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly in 1972 and presided over the House as its Speaker from 1978 to 1979.

Patil was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 1980 and was appointed Union Minister of State for Defence in the Indira Gandhi government the same year.

During his political career, he held a number of portfolios including those of Commerce, Science and Technology, Atomic Energy and Tourism and Civil Aviation.

A voracious reader, Patil has also written a book titled 'Reminiscences and Reflections'.

Too little, too late, says BJP

Dubbing the resignation of Home Minister Shivraj Patil as ‘too little too late’, the BJP, which had been gunning for him over a spate of terror attacks in the country, today said that the whole government had "failed" and should quit.

"It is too little and too late, the resignation of one minister can't be enough. The present circumstances is due to the failure of the whole government," BJP chief Rajnath Singh, who is in Rajasthan, said.

This seems "another unsuccessful tactic" of the government to cool down public sentiments against the government, Singh said reacting to Patil's resignation from cabinet.

The BJP also termed the whole Mumbai incident as a "collective culpable negligence" and demanded that the government should resign.

"It is a collective culpable negligence of the government. The responsibility should also be collective and no government has the right to survive after this," party spokesperson Rajeev Prataap Rudy said.

The resignation also vindicates the BJP charges that the UPA government has been dysfunctional, he claimed.

BJP senior leader and party MP Ravishankar Prasad said, "It is a belated attempt to shield the heat against the UPA government."

It is evident in the light of the preparation by the terrorists preceding the attacks that the government was "callously negligent", he added.

Patil, who had offered to step down in the wake of the Mumbai terror strikes at the Congress Working Committee (CWC) meeting last night, sent his resignation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh this morning.