Corruption storm sullies Indian government’s vote triumph

The money, three opposition politicians claimed, was an advance on a two-million-dollar payment for abstaining from a confidence motion - a vote which the Congress-led government won Tuesday by 275 votes to 256.

"The government has won its vote decisively, but is that going to be the image that will dominate?" asked NDTV managing editor Barkha Dutt in a post-vote broadcast as government officials celebrated.

"Or is it going to be the image of parliamentarians waving bundles of cash?"

The stormy session saw three lawmakers from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) brandish bank notes worth 30 million rupees ($715,000) that they said they had received from government allies.

The moment was televised live to millions of viewers on state-run television, but the channel soon cut away to images of Mother Teresa instead.

"There has been pressure on our MPs to take money to either abstain or vote for the government," said BJP president Rajnath Singh. "Never in the history of our parliament has such a shameful and revolting scandal unfolded."

Even some politicians who voted with the government said parliament had come out deeply tarnished.

"Even if the government has won, the parliament of India has lost today," said Omar Abdullah, head of a pro-India Kashmiri party whose lawmakers supported the government.

"We've been compared to fish marketers and even prostitutes. I don't think I've seen a worse time for parliament and I've been there 10 years."

Allegations have been flying for days that India's government was paying millions to get lawmakers from small parties and the opposition to side with them.

It didn't help its image by using lawmakers jailed for murder to help win the vote.

The nation has long been notorious for corruption, with Indians paying 4.6 billion dollars in bribes to petty officials each year to obtain basic services such as water and electricity, watchdog Transparency International says.

But the allegations made in parliament were aimed at the topmost echelons of power - and the opposition claimed that a television news channel had secretly recorded the bribe taking.

The channel handed the tapes over to the parliament speaker for investigation.

"This is the most unfortunate and a very sad day in the history of parliament," said Lok Sabha speaker Somnath Chatterjee, vowing that "nobody will be spared if found guilty."

The Congress party has flatly denied the charges and called the move a stunt, but political observers said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, long viewed as India's Mr. Clean, was also likely to be tarnished.

"Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi have been seen as different from the run of the mill politicians," said political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan, but added the allegations are "not going to go away."

The government's former left-wing allies triggered the vote by withdrawing their support for Singh earlier this month over the government's decision to go ahead with a controversial civilian nuclear cooperation deal with Washington.

The vote gives the government the green light to move forward with the pact designed to bring India into the global loop of nuclear commerce after decades of international isolation.

"It's still a big victory for Manmohan Singh, but I'm sure he would have liked to win in some other way," Vinod Mehta, editor-in-chief of the weekly news magazine Outlook, told AFP.

"Unfortunately, tomorrow people will still be talking about the money being displayed in parliament."

But Mehta added that Tuesday's display only made visible a corruption that is long-running and deep-seated.

"Indian democracy has been rotten for a long time - this is just one more manifestation of that rottenness," he said. "You've seen the ugliest face of Indian democracy."