Ever since August 19, when the BJP expelled Jaswant Singh for his literary endeavours, one problem has been festering. Singh was appointed chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament when he was still a BJP member. But removing him from the post — without his consent — is proving impossible for the BJP. And since he has refused to quit, BJP members have simply boycotted meetings. Though it is put out that the BJP has ended its “official” boycott, its MPs were still missing from Tuesday’s PAC meet.

Parliamentary committees are hardly the place to settle personal squabbles, and bunking work is an absurd way to protest Jaswant Singh’s non-resignation. If the party wishes to discipline its own, or those who were once its own, it must do so on its own time, not on the nation’s. That the committee in question is the PAC is particularly troubling. The PAC is charged with maintaining legislative oversight on executive expenditure; but the committee could do with some oversight itself. PAC members hardly, if ever, haul of the executive, or question their decisions. It is for good reason that critics allege that few legislatures have as little say in government expenditure as ours does. The BJP’s attitude is further proof of how casually our parliamentarians regard this critical function.

Few sights are as pathetic as a sulking party shirking work. The BJP lost the recent general elections decisively, was trumped in the assembly elections that took place soon after, and its internal squabbles are the stuff of satire and parody. But if this is cause to sulk, it isn’t cause to shirk work. BJP MPs in the PAC must get back to work, with or without Jaswant Singh. And the sorry light this episode has cast on parliamentary work ethics must serve as a wake up call for everybody else.