A senior Indian politician has reportedly been caught urinating in public, despite a high profile campaign by the country’s Prime Minister to clean up the streets.

Radha Mohan Singh, the minister for agriculture, was allegedly captured on camera urinating against a wall while his security detail looked the other way, local media reported.

Undated images were shared on social media by the Rashtriya Janata Dal political party – a rival of Mr Singh’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

They were taken during a visit by Mr Singh to Motihari, a village in his constituency of East Champaran, according to the News18, a Hindi language news channel.

The Independent, along with other local media outlets, was unable to verify the pictures.

Mr Singh was criticised after their release, by those who claimed that public urination was not in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat campaign to clean up India’s streets.

The drive, launched in 2014, aims to eliminate defecation in public by constructing some 12 million toilets in rural areas.

Mr Singh’s team has been contacted by The Independent for comment but none had arrived at the time of publication.

A second image, reportedly of Indian agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh (RJD/Twitter)

However, Rajib Ranjan, a spokesman for the BJP, told the Hindustan Times: “There is absolutely nothing wrong in what the minister did.”

He said: “One cannot suppress nature’s call for long. What do you do if you are travelling long distances and there are no public urinals on the way?”