Senior bureaucrat L V Saptarishi, who is in the eye of a storm following his attack on election commissioners B B Tandon and N Gopalaswamy, has said he had raised some issues on the election in Chapra Lok Sabha constituency in "national interest".

The director general of Centre for Advancement of Rural Technology has, in his reply to a government show cause notice on his attack against the two commissioners, said he had done it in national interest as IAS officers have also been given powers to protect the Constitution.

Rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said on Wednesday that Saptarishi said that he had written to law minister H R Bhardwaj and held a media conference on the issue "keeping the Constitution in view".

The three-page reply by Saptarishi, who was Special Observer in Bihar during the Lok Sabha elections last year, has been sent to the Personnel Department, the minister said.

The IAS officer of the West Bengal cadre said he had written to Bhardwaj alleging that the two election commissioners had colluded with Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in getting the poll countermanded in Chapra, where railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav was a candidate.