Prime Minister Manmohan Singh flaunting his newly acquired skill at flashing the V-sign before entering Parliament on Tuesday. Later, delivering a speech that could not be completed in the din, the Prime Minister tore into L.K. Advani, saying the Opposition leader described him as “the weakest PM, a nikamma PM”. Picture by Rajesh Kumar

New Delhi, July 22: At the end of a day as darkly theatrical and stirring as yesterday was dull, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh emerged unruffled master of the game, winner of the riskiest wager of his life by 275 to 256.

A “magnificent victory” he termed it, flaying both the BJP and the Left with uncharacteristic assurance as he sped off from Parliament in a blaze of arc lights and cheering that drowned daylong acrimony.

The Left benches fell sullen upon the announcement of the verdict, the NDA quickly dissolved into the lobbies, the treasury became an eddy of congratulation around Manmohan and Sonia Gandhi.

Ten MPs had abstained from the vote and over 10 cross-voted — mostly from the BJP — to give the UPA a cushion of numbers few had credibly predicted.

The Prime Minister had stood to close the two-day trust motion, already confident of victory and unfazed by the raucous echoes of an unseemly mid-afternoon spectacle in which three BJP MPs emptied two bagfuls of currency — rubber-banded wads of thousand rupee notes — on the records table, claiming it an advance from the Samajwadi Party to abstain from the vote.

The dramatic, and unprecedented, manoeuvre from the BJP benches left the House stunned and forced several uproarious adjournments. Despite repeated assurances from Speaker Somnath Chatterjee that he would look into what he called a “most unfortunate and sad” matter, the BJP protest wouldn’t relent.

As leader of Opposition L.K. Advani sat watching the unruly turn of his benches, party leaders and backbenchers alike entered the well of the House shouting “Pradhanmantri beimaan hai, Pradhanmantri istifa do” when Manmohan rose to speak. But unable, in the face of the BJP’s grating and uncontained protest, he calmly handed his speech to record officers.

And when it came to a division, BJP lead benches were in gripe again, demanding the Prime Minister’s departure from the Lok Sabha on the ground that he isn’t a member. “The Prime Minister can’t be here, several ministers can’t be here, they should be asked to go,” the BJP’s V.K. Malhotra was heard complaining to the Speaker, who immediately overruled him. All the while, Manmohan sat motionless and wryly smiling behind his front desk.

Having staked his government on the Indo-US nuclear deal, he hadn’t shrunk from a fight on the floor of the Lok Sabha; he wasn’t about to be deprived of savouring the moment of victory. The last fortnight may, in fact, have seen a radical transformation in Manmohan — from an “apolitical technocrat” unprepared to sully his hands in the necessities of realpolitick to a hard-boiled combatant who was prepared to employ every trick in the book to wrestle, and overcome, opponents.

Following the withdrawal of the Left, the Congress had gone into overdrive trying to muster a majority, even as the government fast-tracked the nuclear deal in order to meet international deadlines. Keen that the deal not be seen as the initiative of a minority government, the Prime Minister himself played a role in bringing the Samajwadi Party on board. But if wooing the Samajwadis had been a smart and timely political realignment to neutralise the loss of the Left, there was also inducement at play.

The race for numbers had been a see-saw battle in which the government and the Congress — aided by the backroom abilities of players like Amar Singh — matched their adversaries move for move. Multi-pronged strategies — overt and covert — were employed.

Amar Singh not only had the task of minding an uncertain Samajwadi Party flock being aggressively poached by Mayavati, he had also taken upon himself to go out and hunt. If he lost the high-profile Shahid Siddiqui to Mayavati, he bagged Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of the BJP.

Manmohan’s party and government did their own bit. Shibu Soren, for instance, was offered a cabinet berth and more in return for his five MPs. The renaming of the Lucknow airport after Chaudhary Charan Singh was seen as a lure to Ajit Singh and his three MPs. The deal with Soren worked, the jury is still out on how Ajit Singh voted.

The government’s opponents, of course, allege, that its “dirty tricks department” went even beyond; some of that, it claimed, floated up onto the floor of the Lok Sabha in the form of cash.

Earlier in the day, Brajesh Pathak of the BSP had alleged that the CBI had sent an officer to his flat with a message that Mayavati will “face the consequence” if her party MPs did not vote with the government in the trust move. “The government is nakedly using money and intimidation,” Prabhunath Singh of the JDU angrily alleged after the BJP MPs — Ashok Argal, Mahavir Bhagora and Faggan Kulaste — had unloaded the cash on the floor.

Speaker Chatterjee, however, declined to accept repeated demands from both the NDA and the Left to institute a House committee probe into the allegations, saying only that he had taken “serious note” of the matter and that “nobody found guilty would be spared”.