New Delhi, July 5 :     Battered by controversies, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is headed for a showdown with the Opposition in Parliament's monsoon session, scheduled to begin later this month. At yesterday's meeting of the parliamentary sub-committee on ASI, the MPs pinned down the organisation and gave its director-general Komal Anand a taste of what to expect in the House. The Opposition, particularly the Congress, has dredged up a great deal of information to tighten the screws on the ASI's 'unprofessional' functioning, its lack of accountability and its 'potential to stir communal tension'. 'A case in point is the recent controversy about some sacred objects found one kilometre from the Fatehpur Sikri complex,' said Eduardo Faleiro, Congress member of the Rajya Sabha. A few months ago, excavations around Fatehpur Sikri yielded Jain idols, prompting D.B. Sharma, superintendent of the ASI's Agra circle, to state that the minority community 'did nothing but demolish temples'. This angered a section of historians. 'Sharma circulated a note making this sweeping statement even when the excavators working at the site showed the utmost caution and did not rush to any conclusions,' said Harbans Mukhia, professor of medieval history at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Soon after reports of the excavation made the headlines, Mukhia visited the site with three busloads of JNU students and later had a running spat with Sharma in newspaper columns. The historian, however, refuses to paint the whole of the ASI with the same brush. 'I was impressed with the two excavators who were at the site of Fatehpur Sikri. They were extremely professional and knew their job,' Mukhia said. Faleiro believes the Fatehpur Sikri excavations, if 'tampered' with, can explode into another Babri demolition. 'The ASI cannot jump to conclusions till the excavation is complete. There cannot be a repeat of Ayodhya,' he said. The organisation was pushed to the centre of a huge uproar at the time of the Ayodhya controversy with some of its leading archaeologists maintaining there was a Ram temple beneath the Babri mosque. At yesterday's meeting, the MPs told Anand that such statements should not be made without properly evaluating the findings of the excavations. Though the ASI is trying to shove the blame for the statements on 'media pressure', its bosses will be hard put to explain in Parliament Sharma's remarks on the find in Fatehpur Sikri. They will also find it difficult to explain the delays in publishing reports that should be brought out each year. The MPs pointed out that 46 excavations conducted by the ASI since 1952 have gone unreported.