New Delhi, July 31: A chaotic day in the Rajya Sabha ended with the prospect of Jaswant Singh replying to questions in the House tomorrow on the mole controversy.

But the former foreign minister (in picture) was already displaying an author’s thin skin this evening.

“You want to peel off my skin over this?” he lashed out at a gaggle of reporters who had accosted him outside Parliament. “Please go ahead and do it. Let me ask you a simple question: has anyone here read the book? Can you place anything in context?”

He calmed down after a while to confirm he had written another letter to the Prime Minister today after Manmohan Singh’s stinging reply that he hadn’t revealed the name of the alleged US mole in the Prime Minister’s Office during P.V. Narasimha Rao’s tenure.

The BJP sought to downplay the issue by claiming that Jaswant “never said there was a mole”. “He just said secrets were leaked from the PMO,” BJP spokesperson V.K. Malhotra said.

In his book A Call To Honour: In Service of Emergent India, Jaswant has claimed that a person had leaked information on India’s nuclear programme to America.

The BJP leader later wrote a letter to the Prime Minister and claimed to reporters he had revealed the name of the mole to him. Manmohan sent him a reply yesterday, saying Jaswant hadn’t mentioned any names.

Jaswant briefed party leader L.K. Advani on the subject today but wouldn’t elaborate before reporters. “I’ll say whatever I have to in Parliament tomorrow,” he said.

Parliamentary affairs minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi confirmed the matter was likely to be taken up for discussion in the Rajya Sabha again tomorrow. He indicated that the Prime Minister may not be present during the debate.

“It is not necessary for the PM to be present for every discussion in Parliament,” Das Munshi said.

In the upper House, the Samajwadi Party and the BJP today joined hands to press for an immediate discussion on the controversy, sparking an uproar that led to a 45-minute adjournment.

Junior parliamentary affairs minister Suresh Pachauri stirred passions some more by saying that the Prime Minister’s letter to Jaswant was “self-explanatory” and then proceeding to read out from it. Several Samajwadi Party and BJP members rushed to the well demanding the Prime Minister’s presence.

Jaswant said he was ready to answer every question in the Rajya Sabha.