It needs to be viewed in a holistic manner. The report has not used the word 'irregularity'. It has also not cast any aspersions.'

Attendance in the house was extremely thin and there were just about 30 members, besides Reddy, present when the debate began at 2.30 p.m. Leader of Opposition Arun Jaitley of the Bharatiya Janata Party walked in at around 3 p.m. and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the leader of the house, entered at 3.25 p.m.

The bill was put to vote soon after that and the entire exercise of introduction, debate, the minister's reply and voting was completed in a little over an hour.

The bill seeks to amend the Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, and the Delhi Metro Railway (Operation and Maintenance) Act, 2002. The legislation is being amended to extend the legal purview of the Metro service to other states as Noida and Gurgaon fall in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, respectively.

The earlier law permitted the operation of the rail only within Delhi and not the NCR. There is a huge volume of traffic commuting between Delhi and its satellite towns everyday.

An estimated 800,000 people use the Delhi Metro daily.

The bill also provides legal cover for Metro services in Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Kochi and Mumbai that are under various stages of consideration.