The government had a close shave on the penultimate day of the budget session of the Parliament when the Left demanded a division at the time of introduction of the Pension Regulatory Authority Bill.
Only a handful of Congress MPs were present in the house at 11.15 am as the move sent the Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Bansal, and minister of state Narayanswamy and Ashwini Kumar in a panic as they were simply not expecting the Left to press for voting.
Interestingly, Speaker Meira Kumar accepted the demand and asked that the lobbies be cleared to set the stage for a division in the House.
Some MPs were seen quickly making their entry into the Lok Sabha from central hall and the inner lobbies, but that only added the figure to around 30 Congress MPs.
Both Pawan Bansal and Narayanswamy then walked to the Opposition benches, asking Leader of Opposition Sushma Swaraj and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani to support the introduction of the bill.
To their relief, the BJP decided to support the bill, otherwise the government would have had to face more than an embarrassment as this is being cited as a money bill, though Pawan Bansal later said he was not sure if this was a money bill or not.
If the government loses the vote on a money bill, it falls. But whether that is also applicable on the introduction stage is not clear.
What is interesting is that the Janata Dal-United, which is an ally of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance, supported the Left in opposing the pension bill.
Along with them, the JD-U's arch rival in Bihar, Laloo Yadav's Rashtriya Janata Dal, also supported the Left.
And not to be left behind were the two arch rivals in Uttar Pradesh -- Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Part -- who also voted along with the Left in opposing the pension bill. Telugu Desam also joined the fray.
But the BJP and the Congress came together and since the BJP members were in good attendance, the bill at the introduction was okayed, much to the relief of Bansal and company.
It is learnt that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has written a letter to Sushma Swaraj thanking her and her party for supporting the pension bill.
It is also learnt that Mukherjee is deeply upset at the large number of Congress MPs who were absent from the House in the morning.
He himself was not there as he was in the Rajya Sabha and the entire front row of the treasury benches were seen empty. While it is not possible to take action against so many MPs, sources say that the leadership would make it clear to them that their absence was not appreciated by the leadership.
