A P.M. PUPPET.........

NEW DELHI: The moment could hardly have been more revealing. Soon after Speaker Somnath Chatterjee adjourned the House at 6pm after BJP's incessant chant of "PM istifa do (PM must quit)", Congress MPs surrounded party chief Sonia Gandhi animatedly discussing the developments.

A few feet away stood Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a file under his arm. All the hullabulloo seemed to go past him as he looked on. If the PM had been stunned by the cash for votes revelation, he hid it well. But the slightly forced smile gave a bit of his tensions away. After having watched ministers, and MPs confer with Sonia, the PM walked away towards the exit, handing the file to an official on the way, his passage hardly obstructed by any MP.

The PM did receive his share of handshakes and congratulations when his government passed the trust vote a couple of hours later. But even when he returned to the House ahead of the Speaker finally initiating proceedings, he sat all by himself. He was handed a few words of encouragement by Jyotiraditya Scindia, but it did appear that the PM was not really keen, barely nodding in acknowledgement.

It has always been India's worst kept secret that Sonia was the "real" power centre behind the government and party. But the action in Lok Sabha on Tuesday seemed to underline it all too bluntly. Even when Congress's heir apparent Rahul Gandhi walked in, he headed straight to his mother's side while Sonia spoke to party MPs. For someone who hardly says anything in the House, the Congress president seemed to be holding forth.

As he sat quite alone on the PM's seat, Singh might have briefly recalled the scams that had rocked the P V Narasimha Rao government. He had, indeed, offered to quit after the stocks scam, but had stayed on after Rao asked him to. But much later, when Rao was caught up in the JMM case — and after Congress lost the 1996 elections — Singh had significantly told a meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party that "Caesar's wife should be above suspicion".

Can that remark come back to haunt the PM 12 years later? The next few days would be evidence of that, but on Tuesday the message beamed out by Congress benches was that they would try and ride out the storm. The discussions on the floor were quick and urgent.

Sonia spoke briefly with Pranab Mukherjee, who in turn directed a couple of party MPs like Praveen Rashtrapal. Soon Lalu Prasad and Sharad Pawar joined the discussions. Up in the Speaker's gallery, CMs of Maharashtra, Haryana and AP— Vilasrao Deshmukh, Bhupinder Hooda and Y S Rajashekhar Reddy — sat watching the proceedings. There were defections to the government side from AP and Maharashtra.