So when security personnel cited the rulebook, Sharma is said to have ticked off the CISF DG and when the door leading to the boarding area from the “ceremonial lounge” was opened for Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, who was returning from Cyprus, Sharma walked through the gate “without pre-embarkation security check.”

Left with no choice, the officials stamped his documents and delivered it to him at the boarding gate. The CISF officially raised the matter with the Cabinet Secretariat, Home Ministry and the Civil Aviation.

Soon after the report appeared in The Sunday Express, Sharma is said to have met Home Minister Shivraj Patil. “An issue has been raised and we are looking into the matter. Any decision will be taken after consultations with the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security,” Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta told The Indian Express when asked whether the VIP list was being expanded.

With Sharma slated to leave for Washington tomorrow, MEA officials were busy trying to ascertain until late this evening whether the list had been amended.

While the MEA claims that the exchange between the Minister and the CISF staff was anything but polite, the CISF is under pressure ever since the facts became public. Admitting that it did report the incident, it now says that the contents of the news report “are not entirely in line with actual events.”

Sharma is also said to have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claiming that protocol was followed. However, in his meeting with Patil, he reportedly pointed out what he called a “constitutional impropriety” — of having top bureaucrats like the Cabinet Secretary and foreign ambassadors on the exempted list while Ministers of State like himself being kept out.

... contd.