Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee forwarded Kumar's resignation, sent from a Chennai hospital, to president KR Narayanan, a spokesman said here on Friday. Kumar becomes the third minister to resign in the past two months from the Vajpayee cabinet, and second from the AIADMK.

Santanu Saikia adds: Kumar had earned the ire of Jayalalitha for not being able to push through her specific agenda in North Block.

The finance ministry's bureaucracy stood firm on attempts by Kumar to get Jayalalitha and her confidante Sashikala off the hook with respect to the income-tax and Fera cases pending against them. He also found it difficult to launch an offensive against former finance minister P Chidambaram and his boss GK Moopanar through the ministry's various investigative agencies.

What came in Kumar's way were well laid-downprocedures regarding investigation and prosecution of individuals. Even if a minister desires, the laws do not allow someone to be let off the hook. The reverse also holds true: a viable case has to be built up through a due process of investigation before someone can be nailed. The ministry was prompt to point this out to Kumar whenever he wished to implement Jayalalitha's agenda.

Pertinently, unlike other ministries, the finance ministry is more transparent. The laws and procedures are well demarcated. Bureaucrats here are difficult to run roughshod over. The very size of the ministry provides the mandarins with sufficient clout to resist pressures from ministers. What Kumar's party colleagues could do in the ministry of law or petroleum cannot be done with impunity in the finance ministry.

Kumar seems to have paid the price for his inability to bend the law in his party boss' favour. A chartered accountant by profession, he understood the workings of the department of revenue. He knew what waspossible and what was not. Sources said that he initially tried to buy time from a demanding Jayalalitha, who wanted Chidambaram and Moopanar's heads immediately. He made an attempt to transfer the investigating officers handling the Jayalalitha cases, but the move soon got embroiled in a controversy that left him badly bruised.

The mercurial AIADMK chief's patience apparently ran out this week when she finally told him to quit. The tension got to Kumar and he was admitted to an intensive-care unit of a Chennai hospital, with high blood sugar and angina pain.

Thalvi Sundaram, the AIADMK's Rajya Sabha MP is now slated to step into Kumar's shoes. Unlike Kumar, Sundaram is not well versed in matters financial. And this time, ignorance is expected to be an asset because it is easier to push through a set agenda when the repercussions are not very obvious.

In the short time that Kumar worked in North Block, he ingratiated himself with the bureaucracy. "We were initially sceptical. But we soon found that hewas receptive to ideas. What is more, he had a cosmopolitan mind and would not cross the line when the consequences were pointed out," a finance-ministry official said. Clearly, what was good for the bureaucracy was not good for his boss.

Kumar also maintained extremely cordial relations with his senior colleague, finance minister Yashwant Sinha. He was the only junior minister in the Vajpayee government whose job profile was carved out directly by the Prime Minister's Office. To that extent, he enjoyed the powers of a minister of state with independent charge in the crucial areas of revenue, insurance and banking.

But to the surprise of everyone, he kept the finance minister fully informed of what he was doing. Crucial files would be sent to Sinha for his approval. Despite demands on his time by Chennai, he is reported to have involved himself deeply in the budget exercise - going through every proposal in detail with Sinha and with his secretaries Montek Singh Ahluwalia and NK Singh.

Like othercabinet colleagues from the AIADMK, he maintained a low profile in the press, except to fire the occasional tirade against RK Hedge and a Jethmalani under directions from Chennai. He did not trust the Delhi press. He thought that the national press gave that "extra twist" to news, which could be misconstrued or misinterpreted at the headquarters.

While Kumar was trying to do his job well, the signals that went to Chennai were contrary. The grapevine carried tales of how he was not his own master and how he was tricked into falling in line by North Block mandarins. His inability to do "madam's work" alienated him from other AIADMK MPs, and finally, from Jayalalitha.