Like all politicians worth their salt Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan is a fighter. But the gladiator in shining armour of the ruling PML-N enjoys the reputation of going for a foray even when good politics demands soft pedaling, if not silence.

His aggressive defence of pursuing peace talks with the outlawed Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, when all the parties represented in the parliament had approved the course, showed his critics that he would seek a fight where none existed.

And his recent gladiatorial combats in the two houses of parliament reminded one of the American comedian Groucho Marx’s definition of politics, uncharitable though it may be. Groucho said, “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

Only critics can dare lambaste Chaudhry Nisar like that. His own partymen, even the dissidents, put him second in the PML-N hierarchy after the party chief Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif.

After all, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has graced the parliament with his presence not more than six times in the 10 months that the party has been in power.

Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar has been making policy statements on his behalf and holding the fort against the Opposition onslaughts.

This week saw the virtual Leader of the House taking on the opposition for seeking the government’s response to the off-loading of MNA Sheikh Rashid Ahmed from a Toronto-bound PIA flight. A nuisance for the PML-N since it discarded him for cooperating with retired Gen Pervez Musharraf, the Awami Muslim League was traveling on a valid Canadian visa but was off-loaded because an agreement between the US and Pakistan says no one can board a PIA flight overflying the US until cleared by its agencies.

Perhaps, the jehadi past and right-wing connections of the Farzand-e-Rawalpindi made the Americans put a question mark against his name in their database.

The Opposition, however, demanded the government lodge a protest with the American embassy and seek an apology over the “ill-treatment” meted out to Sheikh Rashid.

In a typical point scoring speech, Leader of the Opposition Syed Khursheed Shah also asked the government to break free of “American enslavement”.

Instead of lending a sympathetic ear to his former party colleague-turned-political rival, Chaudhry Nisar launched into taunting him for “crying over an incident which occurred because of former PPP government’s agreement with the US government”.

Though spot on in stating the fact, the minister blunted his political edge by launching into a harangue that provided the PPP legislators the opportunity to start their own.

Chaudhry sahib asked the PPP to stop singing the bravery of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to hide its failures, and recalling, “how meekly your government reacted to the US sneak attack that killed Osama bin Laden”. Such bitter memories could only produce a shouting match, not a rational outcome.

It was not the first time that Chaudhry Nisar’s unnecessary tirades reduced parliamentary proceedings to political humbug. Last October, he paralysed the Senate for two weeks by refusing to take back the number of casualties caused by terrorist-related incidents his ministry provided in reply to a question, which the opposition said clashed with the number given by other equally weighty official sources.

That caused the opposition take the unusual step of holding the Senate proceedings outside the parliament building. Chaudhry Nisar stood his ground to the last and the government pacified the enraged opposition by appointing a state minister for interior to respond to the senators’ questions.

Then the term tamasha that he used two months later to ridicule PTI’s street demonstrations for verifying doubtful votes on the basis of thumb impression is still resounding. Every opposition party, except the MQM, demanded the minister take back his words. But he refused, insisting that tamasha was not an offensive but a parliamentary word, leaving legislators speak at length on the literal meaning of the word.