New Delhi, July 26: The Congress is likely to reward the trust vote apostates with tickets in the Lok Sabha elections as a gesture of thanks for defying their party whip and bailing out the Manmohan Singh government.

Party sources said there was a debate on whether Opposition rebels should be inducted because the move had cost the Congress dearly in Gujarat and to a lesser extent in Karnataka. But the issue was now “more or less” settled in favour of an “aye” after the July 22 trust vote.

“In this case, those from the other parties who voted for us made their stand clear and transparent on the floor of the House without fear and any other sort of motivation,” said a source, “while some of the desertions in Gujarat and Karnataka were questionable and embarrassed our party”.

Among those being actively considered for tickets are H.T. Sangliana, K.C. Manjunath, Somabhai Gandalal Patel, M. Jagannath, D.K. Audikesavalu and P. Pookunhi Koya. While the first four voted for the government, Audikesavalu and Koya abstained.

Sangliana, a former Karnataka director-general of police, won on a BJP ticket from Bangalore North but always told confidants of the discomfort he experienced in the party because of his respect for the Nehruvian worldview. A Mizo domiciled in Karnataka, he is likely to contest from Mizoram on a Congress ticket.

Jagannath, a former Telugu Desam MP and a confidant of N. Chandrababu Naidu, crossed over as he believes that the caste coalition worked out by Andhra’s Congress chief minister Y.S.R. Reddy was a more viable ticket to success than the one forged by the Desam.

The Desam has lost considerable ground and Naidu’s tie-up with the BSP is being viewed as an attempt to shore up his sagging prospects. But many in the party wonder how the Kamma-Dalit axis would play out on the ground as the Desam represents the intermediate land-owning caste and the BSP the largely landless.

“It proves our point that politics was the foremost consideration while switching sides,” a source said.

Koya, the Lakshadweep MP elected on a Janata Dal (United) ticket, was a nominee of George Fernandes. With Sharad Yadav and Nitish Kumar calling the shots, it is understood that Koya was not sure of being renominated.

The Congress, on its part, was looking for a candidate to fill the vacuum caused by the death of P.M. Sayeed.

The Congress’s experiment with courting rebels was a disaster in Gujarat. It had thought that the dissent against Narendra Modi was a sign of things going wrong for the BJP. So Congress candidates were dumped in favour of the rebels despite their dubious record on the Hindu-Muslim question. In the end, the calculation went horribly wrong.

Sources said when Congress emissaries spoke to potential BJP defectors before Tuesday’s trust vote, they promised Lok Sabha tickets except in an odd case or two.

Manorama Madhawaraj, the Udupi MP who was absent on July 22, had already been “rewarded” with an Assembly ticket for her son.