Click to play videoNew Delhi: It’s not just Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who is in a spot over the aborted Indo-US nuclear deal.
Another architect of the deal, India's ambassador to Washington, Ronen Sen, has been formally summoned by a Parliamentary Privileges Committee for his alleged remarks over the deal.
He had referred to opponents of the pact as "headless chickens" and this was seen to include MPs as well.
The committee met on Monday and decided to summon Sen to appear before the House panel.
The date when Sen would be called will be decided by the committees of the two Houses which are tasked with matters of decorum and propriety.
This would be the first time that a serving diplomat has been asked to appear before a parliamentary committee.
Sen's comments had angered MPs across political parties, some of whom had filed notices against the envoy with the privileges panel.
With both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs feeling that he should be summoned, the high-profile diplomat may have to appear before the House panel even as he has sent in a written apology for his remarks arguing that they were directed at journalists, not politicos. If he is summoned, Sen's will be the first case of a diplomat being asked to appear before the parliamentary committee.
In the thick of the nuke deal controversy that stalled most of the monsoon session of Parliament, Sen was quoted as having remarked, ''Why do you have all this running around like headless chicken, looking for a comment here or comment there, and these little storms in a tea cup.'' This caused a furore that disrupted business for the day in both Houses last August.
Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee had referred the issue to the privileges committee after receiving a reply from the external affairs ministry in which Sen had expressed unqualified apology. The ministry had pleaded that in view of the apology, the matter be closed.
With senior MPs cutting across ideological divides - from Opposition BJP to the Left parties (CPM and CPI) - opposing the deal, taking a serious view of the remarks, a host of MPs had filed notices against Sen with the privileges panel of both Houses.
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