Big cross-voting in Cong an alarm

Lucknow: Kapil Sibal may have edged past Preeti Mahapatra in Saturday's cliffhanger and secured his Rajya Sabha berth, but the former Union minister will not return to Delhi raving about his electoral experience in Uttar Pradesh's Congress camp.
With only 25 first preference votes to his credit on Saturday, and his final tally adding up to 34, Sibal fared only marginally better than his MLC colleague Deepak Singh did in the UP legislative council polls on Friday.
In worrisome signs ahead of UP assembly polls, party insiders told TOI that the Congress camp indulged in largescale cross-voting and presented a nearly disintegrated picture on Saturday. While one MLA, Kunwar Kaushal Singh 'Munna' was absent due to ill health, two other Congress MLAs were spotted in the rival BJP legislative party office on Saturday afternoon. Another Congress MLA, though not spotted on Saturday, had already pledged her allegiance the BJP.
There was considerable disenchantment among Congress's Muslim MLAs as well and sources said four of the five MLAs from the minority community defied the party's diktat.
In a shocker, Congress legislative party leader Pradeep Mathur sacked with immediate effect party's chief whip Mohammed Muslim for indulging in "anti-party" activities. Muslim was among those who was believed to have voted against both Sibal and MLC Deepak Singh in Friday's polls. Muslim represents Tiloi assembly segment in Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's constituency Amethi.
If Preeti Mahapatra has arrived in UP with the aim of causing an upset, she achieved her goal, at least as far as it concerned the UP Congress. Though not all defection favoured Mahapatra, with just about 20 of Congress's 29 legislators voting in favour of Sibal, the legislators' mandate was as much against the Congress party and its decisions, as it was in favour of the parties they voted for.
In the end, the Supreme Court advocate had to depend, for his victory, on friends from other parties. On Saturday, RLD's Bhagwati Prasad and Thakur Tejpal Singh confirmed they voted in favour of Congress, while Sibal also secured the support of two votes from Mukhtar Ansari's Quami Ekta Dal and one from Dr Ayub of Peace Party. To reach the final score of 32 -- at which point Sibal was declared winner -- Sibal also had to depend on second preference votes that were transferred to him both from the Samajwadi Party and BSP camps.