Charges and counter-charges flew fast and thick today, with the Left parties demanding Fernandes' removal and the Congress attacking the Samata leader for involving the Intelligence Bureau in electoral matters.

In defence of its beleaguered ally, the BJP joined issue with the Election Commission while the Samata Party accused the constitutional body of acting like an opposition party.

At issue is Fernandes' admission that he had asked the Director of the Intelligence Bureau (DIB) to investigate whether excess ballot papers had been printed for the two Lok Sabha constituencies of Nalanda and Barh in Bihar which Fernandes and his party colleague, Nitish Kumar, are contesting respectively.

The Election Commission tooka dim view of Fernandes' act of roping in the DIB, saying his involving the Intelligence Bureau in an electoral matter was a corrupt electoral practice and a violation of the Official Secrets Act.

The Election Commission's reprimand has sparked off sharp reactions from all the Opposition parties, with the Left demanding his resignation from the Cabinet and the Congress charging Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee with being party to the attack on the EC.

Accusing Vajpayee of keeping an ``enigmatic silence'' on the unwarranted attack on the constitutional body, Congress spokesman Kapil Sibal said the Prime Minister had himself provided fodder for the assault on the EC by saying that the issue of the ballot papers needed to be probed.

The Prime Minister should end his silence and clear up the matter before it did irreparable damage to the purity of the election process in the country, Sibal said.

Adding to the furore sparked by Fernandes' involvement of the DIB, the two Left parties have sought hisimmediate removal from office of the Defence Minister for deliberately misleading the country by levelling wild charges about excess printing of ballot papers.

CPI National Secretary D. Raja said the Prime Minister should sack Fernandes as his allegations about Bihar were the proverbial last straw. Fernandes had behaved in an irresponsible manner on many occasions in the past, including his statements during the Kargil crisis, but this incident had ``crossed all norms of political propriety'', Raja said.

Voicing a similar demand, the CPM said that after the serious indictment of the Defence Minister by the Election Commission, ``Fernandes cannot remain in office even for a moment''.

The party has also demanded that the Prime Minister clarify about the alleged involvement of the IB in the whole affair. ``This is all the more necessary given the official denial by the Home Secretary, on behalf of the DIB, of any such intervention. The contradiction between the Defence minister's claim and DIB's denialneeds to be cleared.''

Training their guns on Vajpayee, the Left parties assert that since the IB reports directly to the Prime Minister any obfuscation of the facts would be tantamount to Vajpayee's own involvement in the conspiracy to spread false information to influence the voters.

In the face of the furore that has erupted, Fernandes has said that he is ready to face prosecution if the EC felt he was guilty of electoral malpractices.

``The law should take its course, if I am guilty of corrupt electoral practices,'' he said in Patna, adding that if the need arose he might file an affidavit in the Patna High Court explaining his position.

In the face of the Opposition offensive, the BJP and the Samata joined hands in defence of Fernandes accusing the EC of not playing fair.

Faulting the Election Commission of behaving like a ``political opponent'' rather than a neutral constitutional body, the Samata Party regretted that the EC had chosen to ignore the ``partisan manner in which polls wereconducted in Bihar''.

The Commission instead of going into the merit of the Samata Party's complaint was indulging in counter-attack, Samata party spokesperson Jaya Jaitly said.

Caught on the defensive about Fernandes involving the Intelligence Bureau, BJP spokesman M Venkaiah Naidu said his party ``never commented on its ally''.

Instead he charged the EC with failing in its duties saying if there were complaints about malpractices during an election, the Commission should go into the complaint and not go after the complainant.