Causing acute embarrassment to the Congress, party MPs Jagmeet Singh Brar and Lakshman Singh today flouted the party’s long-standing boycott of Defence Minister George Fernandes and sat through his statement on a calling attention motion on MiG crashes. They even participated quite enthusiastically in the ensuing discussion in the Lok Sabha. The motion was listed in Brar’s name. Two other MPs, Vilas Muttemwar and K P Singh Deo, also stayed behind for a while but not for the entire discussion. Brar was later summoned by the Congress leadership (Ambika Soni, Ahmad Patel and Shivraj Patil) for an explanation and has since written to Sonia Gandhi defending himself and seeking to be ‘‘excused’’. Lakshman Singh too ‘‘apologised’’ and said he had not meant to flout party discipline, Shivraj Patil said. However, both Brar and Lakshman Singh later told reporters that they had taken up the issue for the sake of ‘‘national interest’’ and did not seem particularly perturbed by the possibility of disciplinary action against them. Brar said since he belonged to Punjab which had the maximum number of war heroes and martyrs, he was particularly concerned about the huge number of crashes and death of young pilots. Singh Deo and Muttemwar stayed behind for a while after the rest of the Congress contingent, following the initiative taken by RJD members, staged their customary walkout when Fernandes rose to speak. Muttemwar left the House after a fellow member persuaded him to do so but the others paid no heed to the requests. Singh Deo left only after Fernandes read out his statement. Defending his decision before reporters, he said 20 years ago when he was defence minister, the same issue had been raised by Fernandes. Therefore, he wanted to hear what Fernandes had to say. However, since he could have heard the defence minister on the close-circuit television in the lobby, why he insisted on remaining in the House remained unexplained. Shivraj Patil, deputy leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha, admitted that the action of the MPs was ‘‘an embarrassment’’ and the ‘‘punishment’’ for the offence ‘‘will have to be decided by the leadership’’. He said all MPs were well aware of the party’s decision to boycott Fernandes, a decision reiterated by the parliamentary affairs committee this morning. Brar is a member of the committee and Muttemwar a recent entrant. Patil also said that once the calling attention motion came up for discussion, he asked Brar to walk out of the House with the rest. But Brar sounded ‘‘confused’’, mumbled something, and then stayed put. Patil also had no explanation as to why a Congress MP was allowed to raise a defence-related issue, knowing full well that the Defence Minister was being boycotted. ‘‘Why are they raising such issues — that is what we must ask them,’’ he said. Meanwhile, the man in the eye of the storm, George Fernandes, said, ‘‘I am happy that some of them have had the courage to listen to me. I hope others will follow.’’
