Swami Ramdev, India’s most popular and powerful yoga guru, rejected an appeal by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday to call off a hunger strike against corruption, the second major challenge to a government losing its authority due to rampant graft. The charismatic guru, who dons a saffron cloth thrown over his bare torso, runs a $40 million-a-year global yoga and health empire and has millions of followers. Some 30 million viewers tune into his daily yoga TV show.

These followers are expected to rally behind him as he begins on Saturday a “fast-to-the-death” in Delhi until the government agrees to pass a tough anti-corruption “Jan Lokpal” bill and set up a task force for repatriating illegal funds held in foreign bank accounts by Indians.

“There will be over 1 crore (10 million) people who will fast,” Ramdev told reporters at Delhi’s airport after holding talks with four government ministers, rushed there by the prime minister to urge him to call off his fast. “We want to get rid of corruption and injustices happening in institutions and we want to make things fair (in India).”

Singh has struggled to shake off a series of corruption scandals that have embroiled senior officials, including a $39 billion telecoms spectrum scam, the biggest in India’s history. There is widespread public anger over the graft scams, which have also hurt foreign investment and helped delay a series of reforms aimed at opening up Asia’s third-largest economy.

In April, veteran activist Anna Hazare, who is in his 70s, went on a hunger strike over the bill, triggering anti-graft protests by thousands of people across the country. He ended it five days later, after the government agreed to allow activists to take part in drafting it, and to then introduce it in parliament’s next session, due to start in July.

While Hazare is widely respected — his campaign has drawn comparisons to Mahatma Gandhi’s protests and hunger strikes that helped end British colonial rule –, Ramdev wields significantly more clout and has vowed to launch a political party for the 2014 national elections to challenge Singh’s Congress.

Read the full story here. For a website by Ramdev’s followers reporting on the hunger strike, click here.

The Indian Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the Allahabad High Court to delay a potentially explosive verdict on whether Hindus or Muslims own land around the Babri mosque in Ayodhya.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday came after an appeal to the stay on the judgment, saying the matter could be settled out of court. The Supreme Court will meet on Sept. 28 to decide on the appeal and commentators said the date of the actual verdict by the high court — originally due on Friday — was now unclear.

The central government has been on alert for any fallout from the verdict, appealing for calm. It banned public meetings in the state and stopped all bulk mobile text messages since they could be used to spread rumours and plan riots.

A verdict in favour of the Hindus would force the government to uphold the verdict, making it unpopular with Muslims, a key vote bloc. A ruling for the Muslims would mean the government would have to push Hindu groups out of the site, a political minefield.

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