The battle over UPA government's survival moved into last lap with the ruling combine claiming that sizeable opposition abstentions will help it win the trust vote in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asserting that every decision of the coalition was in country's interests.
The ruling combine and the opposition are almost equally poised in the House with an effective strength of 541 in the trust vote to be taken on Tuesday evening and the UPA managers are banking on nearly ten abstentions, all of them from NDA camp, and by Trinamool Congress leader Mamta Banerjee.
But the BJP dismissed all this as mischievous propaganda. The BJP as well as others against the confidence motion claimed that the opposition had a fair chance in the parliamentary battle.
Treasury bench managers claimed that they will win comfortably when the confidence motion moved by the prime minister is taken up for voting on Tuesaday evening. The margin of victory being bandied about by the ruling side is about six to seven votes above the required magic mark of 271.
Moving his one-line motion at the beginning of the two-day debate on the motion, a combative prime minister said the exercise of confidence was "wholly avoidable" and has come at a time when the government's attention has been on the economy, particularly on control of inflation.
The ruling combine fielded External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, government's pointsman on the Indo-US nuclear deal who shared a good rapport with the Left parties, put up a spirited defence of the government.
Keep your hand on your heart and say is this an issue on which you are bringing down the government Mukherjee said attacking the Communists for their decision to vote along with the BJP to defeat it.
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