India's foreign minister filed a petition in the country's top court on Tuesday seeking to halt a probe filed against him by a state ombudsman in a multi-billion-dollar mining scandal.

External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna is facing allegations he released vast tracts of ecologically fragile land to permit mining in the southern state of Karnataka during his tenure as chief minister.

The federal foreign minister served as Karnataka's chief minister from 1999 to 2004.

Krishna's lawyer, Vijay Lakshmi Menon, told AFP her client had filed the petition in the Supreme Court seeking to stop the investigation by Karnataka's ombudsman.

"The complaint against S.M. Krishna must be quashed. There can be no criminality attached to a cabinet decision," she said.

Last December, Karnataka's ombudsman admitted a complaint against Krishna accusing him of wrongly releasing 6,000 acres (2,430 hectares) of forest land to allow mining.

The federal minister has dismissed the allegations.

Last year an Indian judge investigating corrupt mining practices in a resource-rich southern state charged that illegal extraction had cost the public $3.6 billion.

The mining scam is the latest in a series of corruption scandals in India, which is still reeling from the bungled sale of telecom licences in 2008 that is estimated to have cost the country up to $40 billion.