Trust vote debate: The countdown begins

By Sumit Pande and Neenaz Ichaporia, CNBC-TV18

Seventy-two hours to go before the trust vote debate begins. It's time to renew old friendships, forge new alliances, offer a price that could be a ministerial berth or even the renaming of an airport; politics in Delhi has suddenly acquired all the thrills of a twenty-twenty cricket match.

You have to name a price and it will be considered. To save the government and its nuclear deal, the ruling coalition is being forced to strike innumerable smaller deals, some of them quite demeaning and a few ridiculously bad bargains. But the government has no other way to muster a majority and the opposition is crying foul

Arun Jaitley, General Secretary, BJP, “We regret that the office of the PM and continuation of this government has become a bargaining counter.”

Shibu Soren's five Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MPs are suddenly in demand. For Shibu it's almost deja vu, a repeat of the infamous underhand deal of 1993 that he had struck with Narasimha Rao to bail out a minority government. Soren, predictably, has gone into hiding. He has been offered a portfolio in the Cabinet. The BJP is also willing to offer him chief ministership of Jharkhand. The Congress suddenly views the controversial Soren in a completely different light.

Veerappa Moily, Congress Leader said, “We should realise the ground realities. Soren is part of the UPA and has been acquitted in some cases."

Ajit Singh has extracted a portion of his pound of flesh. Amausi airport in Lucknow has been renamed after his father former Prime Minister Chaudhury Charan Singh. The RLD's three MPs mean a lot to the UPA right now. But a pledge from the RLD may not be enough in a chaotic trust vote where cross-voting may easily upset calculations.

Ajit Singh, President, Rashtriya Lok Dal said, “Politics has become so fractured and since elections are so near a lot of MPs are looking at what happens to them in the elections.”

The Samajwadi Party is meeting today. So is the JD (S). The Trinamool Congress and the National Conference are expected to take a call within the next two days. For the Congress, survival means convincing at least three blocks of smaller parties and Independents. It's a touch and go scenario. And the MPs are aware that this is their only chance to drive home a hard bargain.