New Delhi: There was considerable confusion in the Indian Parliament on Tuesday night, after a day of high drama, after results of electronic voting showed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government win the crucial confidence vote in the Lok Sabha by 253 votes to 232.
The voting recorded two abstentions in a house with 487 votes registered. Apparently, many members had either not voted properly or had waited to do manual voting that the speaker said would follow.
However, it was later announced that 54 votes were still to be counted, including of four members who voted in the inner lobby. They included former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who could not be present in the chamber because of illness. Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said the final results were yet to be declared, but MPs began crowding around a smiling prime minister and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi to congratulate them.
