Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said the fir­ing of Plan­ning Min­is­ter Mary King was "ex­treme­ly re­gret­table."

Claim­ing he was not privy to the de­tails of what caused it, he not­ed: "Clear­ly the Prime Min­is­ter in­ves­ti­gat­ed the mat­ter with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and felt there was suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to re­voke her ap­point­ment. "Mary has a lot to of­fer and her pres­ence will be missed. It can't be a joy­ous day for any­one. The Prime Min­is­ter won't re­joice." Bharath said those who knew King knew her as a de­cent and hon­est per­son. Com­ment­ing on the over­lap­ping of a MP's per­son­al life in­to his/her pub­lic life, he said: "That's why you have rules of in­tegri­ty on how to con­duct your af­fairs. "There is al­ways an over­lap­ping of your per­son­al life." YB