New Delhi, Mar 17 (ANI): Both Houses of Parliament adjourned till noon on Thursday after the Opposition slammed the UPA Government over a WikiLeaks disclosures that indicated that Congress paid lawmakers to survive a vote of confidence in 2008.
Both houses witnessed an uproar when opposition leaders tried to speak, with Congress members objecting and getting up on their feet.
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj said the information in the cables was a big blot on Indian democracy.
"There is no bigger shamelessness than this...that people were showing war chests to outsiders," she said, adding that the government has lost the moral authority to be in power.
"It is conclusively clear that this government survived on the basis of a political sin," said leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley.
"The government which survived on the strength of such a political or moral sin has no authority. We demand that this government must resign immediately," he added.
"This (the cable) is a humongous indictment of the way the government has functioned," said CPM leader Sitaram Yechury.
He referred to the "gross degeneration of political morality" and said the government had shown "political opportunism."
Earlier, a set of India-related diplomatic cables on the Indo-US nuclear deal released by the WikiLeaks, claims that an aide of Congress leader Satish Sharma had told a US diplomat that the party had paid crores to several lawmakers to ensure that they voted for the deal in Parliament.
In a cable dated July 17, 2008 sent to the US State Department, Charge d'Affaires Steven White wrote about a visit the embassy's political counsellor paid to Rajya Sabha MP Satish Sharma.
Sharma, according to WikiLeaks, told the US diplomat that he and others in the Congress were working hard to ensure that the government would win the confidence vote on July 22, 2008.
According to White, Sharma's political aide Nachiketa Kapur mentioned to an embassy staff member in an aside on July 16 that the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) had been paid Rs 10 crore to each of its four MPs.
Kapur mentioned that money was not an issue at all, but the crucial thing was to ensure that those who took the money would vote for the government.
Kapur showed the embassy employee two chests containing cash and said that around Rs. 50-60 crore was lying around the house for use as pay-offs
Sharma also revealed to him that the top Congress leadership including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself were in favour of the Indo-US nuclear deal and had conveyed this message clearly to the party.
"Efforts were also on to try and get the Shiv Sena to abstain.
Further, Sharma mentioned that he was also exploring the possibility of trying to get former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya to speak to BJP representatives to try to divide the BJP ranks, " the cable quoted the US official as saying.
The UPA Government had sailed through the 2008 trust vote with 275 votes in favour and 256 against. (ANI)
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