Fernandes addresses a news conference in Delhi on Friday. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

New Delhi, April 22: Janata Dal (United) president George Fernandes ? under parliamentary scrutiny for the South African gun deal ? stands isolated in his party and the NDA.

The Hind Mazdoor Kisan Panchayat, the trade union he created, is in a shambles after his former lieutenant, Sharad Rao, left the Dal (United) and joined the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

The Hind Mazdoor Kisan Panchayat, once the dominant union in western India and parts of south India, is left with the crumbs after Rao walked away with the major workers? unions it controlled like the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation Workers? Union, the General Workers? Union and the Bombay Dock Workers? Union and more importantly, the prime properties in which these were housed and the resources they controlled. Fernandes only has the Taxmen?s Union and a cooperative bank as consolation prize.

Fernandes?s only support comes from the RSS and the BJP. The BJP?s intellectual cell convened a meeting in his defence today under the banner of ?politics of vendetta?. Tomorrow, the RSS and the Janata Party president, Subramaniam Swamy have organised a seminar titled ?Threat to India?s Integrity?.

While the BJP function made no bones about its intent to take up cudgels for the former defence minister, the seminar tomorrow will approach the ?save George? campaign in a more subtle way.

Apart from the defence deals in which he is allegedly involved, the discussions will span a gamut of other issues on which Swamy and the RSS claim Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the United Progressive Alliance government will have a lot to ?answer? for.

These are the arrest of the Kanchi acharya, Swami Jayendra Saraswati, the ?demographic invasion? from Bangladesh and the ?threats? to the Constitution ? Jharkhand and Goa being the context.

While Fernandes, a known Sonia-baiter, will inaugurate the seminar, a common thread binding most of the other speakers is their antipathy for the Congress president.

They include the Swadeshi Jagran Manch ideologue, S. Gurumurthy, his associate from the Chennai-based Centre for Policy Research, J. Bajaj, Swamy, BJP veteran Murli Manohar Joshi and Subhash C. Kashyap, who was part of the 10-member Constitution Review Committee.

The committee was set up by the NDA government to discuss, among other things, whether a naturalised Indian citizen could hold a high constitutional post.

When the issue of whether the Constitution should be amended to exclude such citizens was put to vote before the committee, Kashyap and four others voted in favour of the proposal.