New Delhi, Dec. 3 (The Telegraph): Finance minister Arun Jaitley today told the Rajya Sabha that his counter yesterday to Congress MP Kumari Selja's caste complaint against a temple no longer "survived" in the light of her subsequent clarification, while fellow minister Piyush Goyal expressed "regret" for his comments against her.

But the upper House plunged into fresh turmoil over the presence of junior foreign minister V.K. Singh, accused of insulting Dalits with a dog parallel while distancing the government from the murder of two Dalit children in Haryana in October.

Earlier in the afternoon, the row over Dalit MP Selja's complaint on Monday about having been asked her caste at a Gujarat temple, when she was a Union minister, appeared to have been settled.

"In view of Seljaji's statement that she had made no reference to the main Dwarka temple in her speech on Monday, and which she has reiterated now also and yesterday also, the issue raised by me yesterday doesn't survive," Jaitley said.

Jaitley had yesterday read out from the visitors' book at the main Dwarka temple in which Selja had in February 2013 complimented the shrine management. After this, Goyal accused her of "manufactured discrimination".

Selja had on Monday itself clarified that she was speaking of the Beyt Dwarka temple and not the main Dwarka shrine, and repeated the point yesterday.

The issue consumed the pre-lunch session today. Parliamentary affairs minister M. Venkaiah Naidu first objected to Selja citing her temple trauma to ridicule the "Gujarat model of development".

"In the course of the discussion on our commitment to the Constitution, certain comments had been made. One of them refers to 'Gujarat model'," Naidu said.

"I request the Chair to go through the records and, then, take appropriate action because a reference should not be made to a state and its people."

Chairperson Hamid Ansari immediately accepted the demand and agreed to examine the record.

Goyal then stood up to express his regrets. "In view of the Chair's decision to review the record, I regret the comments made with reference to my distinguished colleague, Kumari Selja," he said.

But the Congress wasn't immediately mollified. About 15 of its members, led by Selja, continued to chant slogans such as "We want justice", "Narendra Modi hai hai" and "Samvidhan ka apman bandh karo (Stop insulting the Constitution)".

Jaitley's statement followed sometime later, appearing to cap the controversy.

Minister fracas

As soon as V.K. Singh walked in, Satish Mishra of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) said he should not be allowed into the House.

Singh had triggered a controversy while arguing that the government should not be blamed for the murder of the Dalit children, burnt alive in Faridkot.

"For everything, like if somebody throws a stone at a dog, (some people have a habit of saying that) the central government is responsible. It's not like that," he had said.

When House deputy Chair P.J. Kurien said Singh had every right to be in the House as a minister, BSP members and some Congress MPs picketed the well shouting slogans, prompting the day's fifth adjournment.

When the House reconvened, the protests continued as Singh had not budged from his place on the second row of the treasury benches.

Seeing him smile at them further enraged the Opposition. "He is laughing," fumed an MP.

Naidu was heard saying over the din: "This is nothing but competitive caste politics."

One more adjournment later, the Opposition agreed to hold its fire to allow home minister Rajnath Singh make his statement on the Chennai floods.

But the BSP's insistence that Singh had no right to be in the House following his "dog analogy" suggested the fracas was far from over.

Photo credit: The Telegraph