An 86-year-old Congress Party official was forced to resign yesterday after a television news channel broadcast footage allegedly showing him in bed with three young women.

Narayan Dutt Tiwari, the governor of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, insisted that the video was fabricated, as did his party, but Congress leaders demanded that he resign on “health grounds”.

The incident is a rare example of a senior politician embroiled in a sex scandal in a country where the media rarely exposes the private lives of public figures — even when their indiscretions are widely known.

The three-and-a-half-minute video is said to show the frail politician — whose wife died in 1993 — with the women at his official residence. The figure in the video is shown lying on a bed while the naked and scantily clad women kiss him and perform sex acts.

The video was released only a month after a court rejected a paternity suit against Mr Tiwari, from a man claiming to be the son of a Congress Party activist who is alleged to have had an extramarital affair with Mr Tiwari.

On Friday a court issued an injunction to stop the television station ABN Andhra Jyoti News from continuing to broadcast the video but it has became one of the most popular clips on YouTube. The station said that the video was made and released to embarrass the politician over a financial dispute. It said that a woman called Radikha arranged the sting after Mr Tiwari promised her a lucrative mining contract in return for arranging regular liaisons for him with women — but then reneged on his side of the deal.

Indian governors have no executive power but are representatives of the president at the state level and have considerable informal influence. Mr Tiwari’s office issued a statement initially dismissing the report as a “tissue of lies”, saying: “There is absolutely no truth in the alleged news story, which is nothing but sensation-mongering and in poor taste. The Governor . . . is 86 years old, and in the evening of his life.” Opposition supporters and women’s rights groups, however, organised protests in Hyderabad to demand Mr Tiwari’s resignation.

Before local authorities had investigated the footage senior Congress leaders held a meeting in Delhi to discuss the case. They decided that Mr Tiwari should resign.

“I think he has taken the appropriate decision, keeping in view the high standards of public life. We welcome it,” Janardhan Dwivedi, the head of the Congress media department, told reporters after Mr Tiwari resigned.

President Patil also cancelled a planned visit to Hyderabad yesterday.

Analysts said that the scandal highlighted the declining standards of conduct among Indian politicians, who are widely regarded as being corrupt and out of touch with the electorate.

A recent poll found that 83 per cent of Indians believed their politicians were corrupt. Indian MPs who ran for re-election in this year’s general election had become on average 287 per cent richer since the last poll in 2004, according to the first detailed study of their assets. One politician was 9,000 per cent wealthier, according to the study by National Election Watch, a non-governmental organisation.

The report also found that of the 543 members of Parliament 153 have faced or are facing criminal charges, an increase of 19.5 per cent over the 2004 Parliament. Of those, 74 are facing or have faced serious charges such as rape or murder.