123 !

Congress humbled the opposition in the vote on allowing FDI in retail in Rajya Sabha by a convincing margin of 21 votes: a scoreline which was facilitated by desertions from the opposition ranks and support from all but one of the Independents.
The show carried the trademark stamp of Congress’s fabled “management” skills. V Maitreyan of the AIADMK, who initiated the debate, called the 123-102 scoreline a victory of Kamal Nath, the parliamentary affairs minister, and the House, otherwise deeply divided, agreed.
The floor management saw three of the five TDP members abstaining, along with two belonging to NDA: Shiv Sena’s R K Dhoot and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’s Sanjeev Kumar. Congress also got Upendra Kushwaha, a JD(U) rebel who risks losing his membership under the Anti-Defection Act, to vote for the government.

HOW IT ADDED UP FOR UPA
Present strength of RS : 244
Votes : 225
Half-way mark : 113
Voted against FDI in multi-brand retail (with opposition) : 102
Voted for FDI (with govt) : 123
19 members did not vote 9 MPs of Samajwadi Party walked out 10 members were absent
6 of 7 Independents voted for govt

The FDI vote provided yet another evidence that the bitter UP rivals share a surprise consensus to stay with Congress, triggering speculation on what guides the phenomenon. But insiders in the two camps say they have to ape the rival to stop Congress from being forced to pick one of them as friend. If BSP chose to vote for the government in RS, up from abstention in LS, sources said it wanted to undercut SP’s growing clout with Congress. “Mayawati knew Samajwadis could at best abstain,” a leader said.
The “secular” brownie points by being seen as hostile to BJP and neutralizing the “fear of CBI” are secondary gains of what is essentially a gambit to check the political rival.
Congress has been benefiting from the compulsions of UP politics for three years now. The Samajwadis are learnt to be disturbed at being upstaged by the dalit czarina, who scored political points from her stance on FDI, but are hamstrung by the political realities to demand that Congress choose between them. It could only check their clout further in Delhi.

The Congress also bagged the support of all Independents in the House, excepting A V Swamy. Vijay Mallya, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Mukesh Ambani’s aide Parimal Nathwani, Mohammad Adeeb, Ahmad Saeed Malihabadi and SP rebel Amar Singh all went the same way.
Such was the Congress’s confidence that minister of state for parliamentary affairs Rajeev Shukla sought a recount when the electronic scoreboard showed that the government had eked out a narrow victory with a 123-109 margin. The slim gap suggested that the government would have lost had the BSP not voted for it. The revised tally validated Shukla’s confidence.
The presence of Mallya, who the NDA assumed would stay abroad, and the preference of Chandrasekhar, whom the BJP had banked upon, was a tribute to the painstaking work the Congress put in to escape what threatened to be a big political embarrassment. There was a strong element of intrigue about the absence of three TDP members, with political circles wondering whether senior party leader Devender Goud and leader of the party in the House Y S Chowdhary, along with Sudharani Gundu, acted without a wink from party leader N Chandrababu Naidu.
Congress sources denied, although not very convincingly, efforts made by Kamal Nath to play on the pro-reforms instincts of Naidu who has diverse business interests.
Kamal Nath had earlier impressed upon Mayawati that the government’s defeat in the RS would set in motion a trend leading to LS elections at a time when the BSP is still trying to recover from the drubbing in the UP assembly polls.
Although the BSP’s switch to the government camp had settled the issue, the Congress left nothing to chance with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, according to Congress sources, himself working the phone.
Actress Rekha, along with other Independent members, turned up to cast what leader of opposition Arun Jaitley had on Thursday called “thanksgiving vote”. In all, 10 members skipped the vote for various reasons.