Panel should summon Modi for 'inviting ISI' to Punjab: Mann

New Delhi, July 26

Aam Aadmi Party Parliamentarian Bhagwant Mann has demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi must be summoned before a Parliamentary committee to explain why he “invited Pakistan’s Inter-services Intelligence” to Indian Air Force’s base in Pathankot, a move he said could "compromise India’s security".

In his letter to Mahajan, Mann wondered if the Prime Minister's action did not leave India open to security threats.

"In 2001, ISI attacked the Parliament Complex. And in 2016, it launched an attack on the Pathankot airbase. The PM invited the same ISI and took them around the airbase. ISI made maps of the airbase and left," Mann claimed, saying this made the Prime Minister a “100 times guiltier” of having compromised the country’s security.

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"Does this not threaten security of the country? Is my video a threat to the security of the nation or is PM inviting ISI and taking them around the airbase is a bigger threat?”

"The Committee should summon the PM along with me. If I am guilty, then the PM is 100 times more guilty," he claimed.

Mann claimed later that his filming Parliament’s security process was deliberately given a “political colour”.

“I explained my stand to the Speaker, but she said what I did was not right and that I should apologise. So I tendered an apology in writing. I said it was unintentional and that I was only trying to make an educational video. My apology was not considered enough: the issue was given a political twist. I was told to end it, that my act could prove dangerous for the country’s security,” Mann said to the press hours after he submitted his letter to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

Mahajan had announced on Monday that she had constituted a committee to investigate Mann’s action and that he would be suspended from Parliament’s Monsoon Session until the panel submitted a report on August 3.

The committee had given Mann, a Member of Parliament from Punjab’s Sangrur, until July 28 to respond to the charges and decided to seek expert opinions.

A five-member Joint Investigation Team visited the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot in March to investigate a predawn militant strike on the base on January 2. The terrorist attack left seven security men dead. Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed has been accused of having engineered the strike. — PTI