New Delhi, July 31
The Unit Trust of India (UTI) muddle and the offer of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to resign after the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) partner Shiv Sena alleged the involvement of the PMO in it today led to the adjournment of the Rajya Sabha amidst noisy scenes.

The House was adjourned twice before lunch and was finally adjourned for the day when the Congress chief whip, Mr Pranab Mukherjee raised the issue of Prime Minister’s offer to quit just after the Rajya Sabha reassembled. He demanded that the Prime Minister should make a statement in the House explaining the correct position.

He pointed out that a paper had been circulated by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan (about the offer to quit) and the members must know what happened in the ruling coalition. “The House is concerned and the Prime Minister should come and make a statement,” he said sparking off noisy protest from the NDA members, leading to the adjournment.

Earlier, the House witnessed noisy scenes as the Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha started to give his reply on the short duration discussion on the UTI scam. He was unable to continue as the members charged that the government was skirting the main issue and insisted on an explanation behind the offer made by Mr Vajpayee to resign.

Senior Congress member Suresh Pachouri said that the UTI scam issue had become more complicated with the Prime Minister's threat to quit even as Mr Sinha was yet to give the reply on behalf of the government.

Backed by the aggressive mood in the treasury benches, Mr Sinha blamed the then Congress regime for turning the US-64 scheme from a balanced regular income fund to a risky stock-related plan. He claimed that UTI had, in the past, given huge unwarranted dividends on the scheme from its reserves, leading to the present crisis. His remarks led to Congress members angrily trooping into the well of the House raising slogans.

When Mr Sinha rose to reply, he had pointedly referred to remarks by Congress member Kapil Sibal and alleged that these were coming from Patna.

These remarks infuriated the main Opposition, and Mr Sinha was forced to withdraw his comments on the direction of the Chair. However, the acrimonious scenes resurfaced with the Left joining the issue, waving copies of a newspaper report about the alleged involvement of the PMO in the scam, resulting in the first adjournment till 2 p.m.

In the brief remarks he was able to make, Mr Sinha said one of the reasons behind the failure of the US-64 was its high exposure to the public sector units shares which had lost their value heavily in the market since the 1998 bail-out of the scheme. He admitted that the UTI had erred in not heeding an advice tendered by the Joint Parliamentary Committee that it should not invest too heavily in the equity market.