India seemed to have plunged into a political crisis as its parliament was Thursday adjourned following ruckus after the country's opposition parties demanded the ruling United Progressive Alliance government's immediate resignation.
This took place over Wikileaks exposure that the Congress party paid money to buy some MPs ahead of a vote of confidence over the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal in 2008.
Both Houses of Parliament, the Upper House and the Lower House, were adjourned following uproar by the main Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which demanded that the government must step down following the allegations that it paid money to buy some Members of Parliament for a trust vote.
"This government survived on the strength of a political sin," said BJP's Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, the Upper House, Arun Jaitley, adding the government had lost its moral right to continue in office.
Also slamming the government, the Communist Party of India ( Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury said: "This (the cable) is an indictment of the way the government has functioned. It's the gross degeneration of political morality and the government has shown political opportunism. There is no moral ground for the government to continue."
In Lok Sabha, the Lower House of Parliament, BJP's Leader of Opposition Sushma Sharma also came down heavily on the Congress- led government saying, "there is no bigger shamelessness than this. .. that people were showing war chests to outsiders". She also said that the government has lost the moral authority to be in power.
A WikiLeaks cable, published by The Hindu newspaper, from a U. S. diplomat in India dated 2008 suggests that ahead of a vote of confidence for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh over the India-U.S. nuclear deal, the Congress party had bought the votes of Ajit Singh-led Rashtriya Lok Dal party.
The cable claimed that U.S. diplomats were told by an aide of Congress leader Satish Sharma that four MPs from Ajit Singh's party were paid 100 million rupees (200,000 U.S. dollars) each by Congress to ensure that they voted for the nuclear deal in Parliament on July 22, 2008.
The Manmohan Singh government won the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha with 275 MPs voting in favor of the UPA and 256 against it.