NEW DELHI, May 16: The Rajya Sabha Secretariat came under fire on Thursday for introducing changes in an unstarred question asked by Janata Dal MP Som Pal about a particular tender floated by the Telecommunications Department in 1994.

The incident threatened to blow up into a major controversy when a visibly upset Secretary General V Rama Devi, resigned following a heated exchange with Som Pal in the Chairman's chambers.

Som Pal, however, persuaded her later to take back her resignation. ``I told her that there was nothing personal against her in this. I merely raised a point of order so that this kind of tampering does not occur again,'' the MP disclosed.

Rajya Sabha Chairman K R Narayanan has ordered an inquiry into the incident which has sent shock waves through parliamentarians. ``It is the sacrosanct right of MPs to ask questions. The Secretariat does not have any right to tamper with our queries,'' an angry Som Pal declared.

The blow up between the MP and the Secretary General took place when the latter faulted Som Pal for raising the issue in the House. Rama Devi is understood to have told Som Pal that it went against parliamentary convention to mention on the Floor matters relating to the Secretariat.

Taking exception to the Secretary General's comment, Som Pal is believed to have ticked her off for ``sermonising''. He pointed out that the matter amounted to a serious breach of privilege and needed to be looked into.

``Either the bureaucrats think that MPs are fools or they are careless and oblivious of their duties,'' he told her.

Som Pal raised the issue as soon as the House met in the morning for question hour and demanded a ``full-fledged inquiry'' and ``strict action'' against the erring officials for changing his question.

He said the tender number mentioned by him in his original question was deleted ``either by someone in the Secretariat or in the concerned ministry''. As a result, his question became a general one and elicited a general response from the Telecom Department instead of the specific details he had sought regarding that particular tender.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.