Rajya Sabha member and Congress leader KVP Ramachandra Rao (pictured above) has said he is feeling “depressed, dejected and ashamed” after the Deputy Chairperson of the Upper House, PJ Kurien, called him “mad and a laughing stock” during proceedings on February 2, IANS reported. The remarks were later expunged.

Rao had stood near the chairperson’s podium, holding a placard in protest demanding that the Centre fulfil “the constitutional commitments to Andhra Pradesh”. When he did not budge despite Kurien’s orders, the Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson asked him to go to his seat if he had “some sense” and understood that he was “becoming a laughing stock”.

“For the first time in life, I could not console myself last night with a deep feeling of depression and dejection and felt ashamed being the Member of Parliament who was compelled to stay a silent spectator during the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in the name of parliamentary customs and conventions,” Rao said in a letter to Kurien on February 3.

Rao said he wished he had done more to stop the passage of the Bill for bifurcation of the state in 2014, The New Indian Express reported. “I wish I would have been mad rather than sitting idle in the House witnessing the injustice being done to the state by the Centre, which has the constitutional obligation to fulfil the promises made during the process of bifurcation.”