By IANS
New Delhi : India’s envoy to the US Ronen Sen will face the privileges committees of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on Oct 29 and Nov 2 respectively over his ‘headless chicken’ remark about critics of the India-US nuclear deal that left MPs fuming.
While the Lok Sabha committee’s decision to summon Sen had been taken earlier, the Rajya Sabha committee took the decision last week.
The 15-member Lok Sabha privileges committee is headed by Congress MP V. Kishore Chandra Deo and the upper house committee by deputy chairman Rehman Khan.
Sen will be the first diplomat to be summoned by parliament’s privileges committees.
The two panels are expected to ask Sen to explain his remarks.
At a time when the nuclear deal was being debated in the monsoon session of parliament, Sen said in a media interview: “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?”
The remarks infuriated MPs from both the opposition and the government’s communist allies.
An unqualified apology by Sen and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s intervention failed to pacify the MPs, who stalled the proceedings in both houses of parliament demanding the envoy’s recall.
The matter was eventually referred to the privileges committees.