Raipur: Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee should have resigned when the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) withdrew support to the Congress-led government, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader M Venkaiah Naidu said here on Friday.

"Indian democracy is based on party system," Naidu told a press conference, adding that the speaker should have bowed to the decision of his party that sacked him on Wednesday.

Reacting to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) winning the trust vote on Tuesday in the Lok Sabha 275-256, the BJP leader said, "Democracy lost, notocracy won." He added, "This is a tainted victory. (Samajwadi Party) leader Amar Singh bribed several MPs."

Referring to Chandrabhan Singh, one of eight BJP MPs expelled for defying the party in the trust vote, Naidu said the party had prior information that a room had been booked for him in a hospital.

"Chandrabhan said at 3 p.m. on (the trust vote day) that he was fine and had no health problems. But he rushed to hospital on the pretext of vomiting blood just before voting began. It was all planned," Naidu said. Chandrabhan Singh, the MP from Damoh in Madhya Pradesh, alleged Thursday that the party was conspiring to "murder" him.

Discussing the issue of cross voting in the BJP, Naidu said, "Their act has surely brought shame to the party. But what can BJP do if individuals are determined to defy the party?" He predicted that the UPA government would not last long.

"It did not work well when it had the support of 337 MPs. How can we expect it work properly when it has support of just 275 MPs, only three more than the simple majority."

The trust vote won by the Manmohan Singh government with the help of the Samajwadi Party and others was a day punctuated by high drama - with three BJP MPs brandishing wads of currency notes in the Lok Sabha claiming that they had been bribed by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

Source : IANS