The efforts by the Congress-led coalition to prove its majority in parliament have led to a big sell-out of the government. It not only gave in to the demands of an ally to name an airport after his father but also sought the release of six lawmakers jailed for crimes from extortion to murder. The government, scrambling to make up the numbers for Tuesday's crucial vote, is now grappling with demands and conditions from parties it is courting as possible partners. One such demand from Ajit Singh, an MP of the Rashtriya Lok Dal party, was to name the Lucknow airport in northern India after Singh's father Chaudhury Charan Singh, the late former prime minister, according to local media. On Thursday, P. Chidambaram, India's finance minister, announced the naming of the Lucknow airport after the former prime minister, after a cabinet meeting. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was forced to call a confidence vote after his communist allies withdrew their support for the government to protest a civilian nuclear deal with the United States. The Congress party-led government looks set to gain the most as five jailed lawmakers are members of regional party allies. One of the most infamous is a Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) lawmaker Mohammed Shahabuddin from the eastern state of Bihar. He is serving a life term for murdering a political opponent and faces 40 other cases of murder, abduction and extortion. Rajesh Ranjan, another jailed Bihar politician, who broke down in tears when given a life term for murdering a trade unionist in February, finds himself surrounded by party members now. Samajwadi Party, the government's new parliamentary ally, has two MPs who are in jail. One is Ateeq Ahmed, in jail on charges of murdering a political opponent, has already got bail. The Tuesday vote has spawned unheard-of political alliances, accusations of vote-buying to the tune of more than $6 million an MP and accusations of shady deal-making which has sullied even the relatively clean image of the prime minister.
