Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government won a vote of confidence in parliament on Tuesday, ensuring the immediate survival of the ruling coalition and a civilian nuclear deal with the United States.
Earlier the opposition demanded the resignation of the prime minister anyway after three of its lawmakers said they had been bribed to abstain.
The government won 275 votes against 256 for the opposition, the parliamentary speaker Somnath Chatterjee announced.
The session was angry and chaotic. The debate was briefly adjourned when opposition lawmakers interrupted the debate to wave wads of cash they said were offered as bribes by the government to abstain.
The vote pitted the Congress-led coalition that negotiated the civilian nuclear deal against its former communist allies and opposition parties led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
With the vote very close, several MPs who are ill were flown or wheeled in from hospital, and others, in jail for crimes such as murder and extortion, were granted temporary release.
The win means the four-year-old, left-of-centre government will, for the moment, stay in power. It will try and move ahead with a civilian nuclear deal, seen as one of the few legacies of the prime minister.
The deal would draw India closer to the West and allow the Asian giant access to foreign civilian nuclear fuel and technology, despite not signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty and conducting nuclear tests in 1974 and 1998.
It could unlock $40 billion in investment over the next 15 years, according to an Indian business lobby group, as India seeks new energy sources to tap its booming, trillion-dollar economy.
