Lucknow, May 18 :     It was a hijacking the nation never heard about. Less violent and tragic than the headline-grabbing ordeal aboard IC 814, but no less sordid and shocking. On May 12, an Alliance Air plane bound for Lucknow was hijacked in New Delhi and forced to land at Patna. No ransom was demanded. The 27 hijackers wore khadi kurtas, some even sported Nehru topis: they were all MPs from Bihar going home for the weekend after attending Parliament. The people's representatives, cutting across party lines, had 'no time to waste in Lucknow' and preferred to flout all air-traffic control norms and reach Patna first rather than follow the scheduled Delhi-Lucknow-Patna course. 'It was a harrowing experience,' fumes Shailendra Jain, district governor of Rotary International, who was on board Alliance Air Flight CD 7411. A seething Jain, who is yet to get over his ordeal, says: 'The MPs flouted all norms of civilised behaviour. They couldn't have got away with such an obnoxious show of power anywhere else.' But they did, and how. According to the passengers, trouble erupted when some MPs, among them Prabhunath Singh of the Samata Party and Union water resources minister C.P. Thakur, suddenly decided they wanted to go to Patna first. Around 6.15 pm, when the plane had already started taxiing, Singh whipped out his mobile phone and said: 'I want to talk to Sharad Yadav (civil aviation minister).' When a steward approached him, saying, 'Sir, please switch off your cellphone', Singh barked: 'Chup kar, main tera baap se baat kar raha hoon (Shut up, I am speaking to your father).' Soon there was an announcement that due to some reason the plane would have to return to the tarmac and all passengers would have to disembark. 'We objected but the pilot and crew members gave us no explanation,' says B.K. Bansal, another passenger. Bansal and his non-VIP co-passengers got their answer when they saw a harried looking Sharad Yadav rush to the airport and talk to the netas and the authorities. 'Inko Patna utar dena, phir jahan chahe chale jaana (Drop them at Patna first and then go wherever you want to),' a passenger heard the minister order. Civil aviation ministry sources in Delhi confirmed that Sharad Yadav was at the airport then. The minister could not be reached for comment as he is out of the country. Says Jain: 'Even though the ordeal went on for nearly five hours, our persistent queries received no convincing answers. First they said the weather was bad, then they said someone was unwell. Finally, they pleaded they had to go to Patna first because there was no landing facility there after 10.30 pm. But it didn't make sense because we took off from Delhi only at 10.15 in the night and reached Patna around 11.30 pm.' A.K. Upadhyaya, Lucknow station manager of Indian Airlines (Alliance Air is a subsidiary of the national carrier), confirmed the delay but said it could have been due to bad weather. He, however, had no answer when asked how the airline could jeopardise the lives of passengers by 'force-landing' at Patna beyond the 10.30 pm deadline. Bansal, who swears he will never fly with Bihar MPs again, says there was commotion soon after they boarded the plane at 5.45 pm. 'It was a weird experience. We were shuttling between the plane and the cafeteria. After we were asked to deplane and given fresh boarding passes, we were asked to go through the whole security-check process again. Those who didn't want to go through the fiasco were granted free boarding by Indian Airlines. Around 10 persons disembarked,' he said. When the passengers boarded the aircraft again, they heard the pilot announce that the plane would first go to Patna and then come back to Lucknow. Another passenger, who didn't wish to be named, said that apart from the delay and unavailabily of food in the cafeteria, what was most harrowing was the crude behaviour of some of the MPs. 'A monk, who I later learnt was a nominated member of Parliament, was swearing at the crew in the most filthy language. It was such an embarrassment with so many women around,' he said. Though Uttar Pradesh principal secretary, health, V.K. Diwan, who was also on the plane, has apparently threatened to approach the Consumer Forum, most do not see any punitive action coming the way of these MPs.