July 23, 2008	Wednesday	Rajab 19, 1429

NEW DELHI, July 22: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh won a trust vote in parliament on Tuesday amid opposition accusations of horse-trading, with three BJP MPs displaying bundles of currency notes in the house.

They told the scandalised Lok Sabha the money was part of the bribe offered by government lobbyists to win their support in the tense contest triggered by a controversial India-US nuclear deal.

Speaker Somnath Chatterjee ordered a parliamentary probe into the affair and temporarily suspended discussion on the trust vote, which was moved by Mr Singh on Monday to protect his government of just over four years from elections not due till May next year. The government was reduced to a minority recently after its

Left Front allies pulled out over a controversial nuclear deal that Mr Singh is keen to push through the US Congress this year. The deal is opposed by a wide spectrum of lawmakers in both houses.

True to form, nearly all the Indian TV channels, otherwise doing brisk business by declaring it a close call, got the sums wrong as the final count came in. It showed Mr Singh’s United Progressive Alliance-led government winning by a comfortable tally of 275 against the opposition’s 256. There were 10 abstentions. The government’s gain included over a dozen hitherto unanticipated votes, 10 of which turned out to be cast by opposition BJP MPs.

Mr Singh moved the motion but did not vote because he is the odd prime minister who was never a member of the Lok Sabha. Even as the interim count was flashed on the electronic board, but before the final tally was in, he was greeted by overjoyed supporters. They included a beaming Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and her son and MP Rahul Gandhi. He had made a strong defence of Mr Singh’s stand on the nuclear deal.

But, given the moral cost involved, it was Pyrrhic victory, as Mr Singh himself appeared to admit. “These developments have made me extremely sad,” he told reporters after the voting was overshadowed by the televised display of currency notes.

Only on Monday Mr Singh had rebuffed charges of bribery saying: “If this has happened show me proof.”

A feature of the vote was a new political polarisation leading to a likelihood of the formations lasting the next round of state and national elections. Keeping a safe distance from the BJP and the Congress, a new third alliance may have emerged with the Left Front lending support to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Ms Mayawati, who is being projected as the first Dalit prime minister.

She accused the BJP of colluding with the Congress to distort the outcome of the trust vote. “The BJP and the Congress did not want to see a Dalit woman becoming prime minister,” she told a press conference after the house dispersed. “So they joined hands to defeat the chances of my becoming a threat to them.”

Earlier, during the debate, Ms Mayawati’s MPs accused the government of hounding them to defect. “They threatened to unleash the CBI to put her in jail over spurious corruption charges,” said Akbar Ahmed, an MP from her Bahujan Samaj Party.

Communist leader Prakash Karat described the Lok Sabha verdict as a sad day for Indian democracy.