The 22-member Parliamentary Affairs Committee (PAC) told the House Wednesday it could not launch an independent probe into the case as the defence ministry, citing security, had declined to release a report by India's Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), which probes high-level corruption.

But the ruling BJP party said Thursday the report sought by the PAC does not even exist so there was no question of releasing it or holding it back.

The controversy has grown in light of a separate high-level report months ago revealing cases of corruption in purchases of artillery guns, shells, bullet-proof jackets and coffins during the Kargil conflict four years ago.

On Thursday, the Congress party and other opposition parties moved a slew of motions to debate the issue, leading to the house's adjournment.

"For the first time in the history of the Indian parliament the PAC has been denied key document files by the Ministry of Defence," Congress chief whip Priyaranjan Dasmunshi said.

But V.K. Malhotra, chief whip of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party, said the report does not even exist.

"I can say this authoritatively that the CVC report on procurement during Kargil does not exist. The CVC has not dealt with the issue," Malhotra asserted.

But the Aaj Tak television network has been quoting from a set of documents it claims is a copy of the CVC document.

And the matter took a bizzare turn after the adjournment when Defence Minister George Fernandes said he had offered to show the mysterious CVC report to PAC chairman Bhuta Singh.

"We had offered to show the CVC report to the PAC chairman. We had made a similar offer to N. D. Tiwari when he was chairman of PAC," Fernandes said of the two politicians, who belong to the main opposition Congress party.

But Singh, a former home minister, all but called Fernandes a liar.

"I had met the defence minister only once in the presence of Speaker (Murli Manohar Joshi) when he declined to show the CVC report to either of us," Singh told reporters.

The BJP accuses Singh of leaking the report to the media to embarrass the national government ahead of key provincial polls this year.

The Congress, meanwhile, hinted the stalemate in parliament was likely to continue until it got a satisfactory response from the government to its key demand that the CVC report be unveiled in parliament, along with verbatim proceedings of all the sittings of the PAC.

It also wants parliamentary discussion on the issue to which Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee must reply.

India launched a full-scale military offensive in 1999 to dislodge Pakistan-backed forces holding strategic peaks in the Kargil region of Indian Kashmir, leaving some 1,000 combatants dead on both sides.

Within months of the conflict, national auditors dug up a tray of shady arms deals clinched during the Kargil fighting including the import of unusable coffins.

WAR.WIRE