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New Delhi, Sunday (AFP)

Indian Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani, seen as a hardline Hindu nationalist, was promoted deputy prime minister in a shake-up of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's coalition government, officials said.

The presidential palace announcement said Advani, who is the most powerful man after Vajpayee in the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party, will continue as home minister.

Media reports said Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh was set to swap portfolios with Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha in the cabinet shake-up.

Speaking after the widely-expected promotion, Advani said he was "extremely grateful" to Vajpayee.

The 74-year-old Advani, who studied law in the Pakistani city of Karachi before the subcontinent's partition in 1947, is the seventh leader in the history of independent India to become deputy premier.

He first held public office in 1967, becoming India's first Hindu nationalist broadcasting minister a decade later and general secretary of the BJP in 1980.

Advani, who is now seen as a successor to Vajpayee, favors a hardline Indian policy for rival Pakistan.

The home minister, who also views Muslim militancy in Indian Kashmir as cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, has steadfastly refused to snap his political ties with hardline Hindu groups.

He fired the imagination of India's Hindu masses in 1992 by launching a controversial drive to build a temple on the site of a Moghul-built mosque, which led to the razing of the 16th-century shrine by Hindu zealots in 1996 in the pilgrimage town of Ayodhya.

The sacrilege sparked nationwide Hindu-muslim riots which left more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead.

But Analysts said his promotion was a more a political signal than an administrative move.

"Although the post of deputy prime minister is not constitutional, Advani's promotion clearly states that Vajpayee has found someone to succeed him in the BJP party as well as in the government if need be," political analyst Anand Ojha said.

Coalition sources said Advani's promotion was among a number of changes to be announced shortly by Vajpayee aimed at putting the finishing touches to a long-awaited cabinet reshuffle.

BJP president Jana Krishnamurthy who resigned as BJP president earlier Saturday said he has agreed to accept a cabinet post.

His previous role is likely to be filled by Venkaiah Naidu, the minister for rural development, the sources said.

The cabinet reshuffle had recently become a pressing concern for Vajpayee following the resignation of one minister and the appointment of another as parliament speaker.

The sources said that Vajpayee was also likely to bring in new faces from inside the BJP party as well as from its NDA allies in the cabinet.

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