Satyavrat Chaturvedi, a Congress MP, was on Tuesday taken off the panel of party spokespersons for purportedly using a cuss word against NCP chief and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar.

A camera crew stealthily caught Chaturvedi using the expression which, while used almost as a punctuation mark in north India, has not become part of the political lexicon yet. NCP leaders were furious when they saw footage of Chaturvedi candidly expressing his views on the performance of agriculture and food ministries under Pawar and the kind of problems they have been causing to Congress.

Sources said civil aviation minister and Pawar confidant Praful Patel immediately lodged a strong protest against the “base” language used by Chaturvedi, demanding strong action against him. The decision to drop Chaturvedi was taken after a review of the footage convinced party leaders that it was the minimum that they needed to do to mollify the angry alliance partner.

Chaturvedi’s removal was confirmed by sources, though they stressed that Chaturvedi will be persisted with as a senior office-bearer. Sources in the party insisted that the MP did not realize that the camera was rolling when he engaged in some plainspeak about Pawar’s performance.