Amid raucous scenes in the Indian Parliament the Government eased through a no-confidence vote last night, salvaging a crucial nuclear deal with the US and staving off the threat of a snap election.

The unexpectedly easy victory was marred by three opposition MPs who waved wads of cash in Parliament and said that they had been offered a combined bribe of £1 million to abstain.

Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, said that the bribery allegations had made him sad and promised to co-operate with any investigation. The allegations now threaten to plague the government as it prepares for a general election early next year, and tries to secure approval for the nuclear deal from international regulators and the U.S. Congress.

Washington outlawed nuclear trade with India when Delhi tested a device in 1974 but it is ready to lift the ban and supply fuel and reactor technology, even though India has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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The deal is designed to ease the energy shortage in India and to seal a strategic relationship with its former Cold War rival.

One of the last politicals hurdle to the agreement was cleared when the coalition Government, led by the Congress party, won by 275 votes to 256, with 10 abstentions, in the 541-seat Parliament — a higher margin than any predictions.

The vote capped a chaotic two-day debate in Parliament and a fortnight of backroom bartering that highlighted the complexity of Indian politics. To make up the numbers the Government had released temporarily six MPs from prison and renamed an airport after the father of another. The Opposition flew in one MP who was recovering from heart surgery in Bombay and another who was recovering from knee surgery in Los Angeles.

Four MPs had to vote from the lobby of Parliament — one of them on a hospital trolley — because they were too sick to take their seats.

Mr Singh, who agreed the nuclear deal with President Bush in 2005, described it as a convincing win. “This will send a message to the world at large that India’s head and heart is sound, that India is prepared to take its rightful place in the committee of nations,” he said, as supporters lit fireworks in central Delhi. “I have always said the deal was important and now we know it.”

The Prime Minister is now likely to wait until early next year to call the general election, which must be held before May. He hopes to have tamed inflation, currently at almost 12 per cent, by that time.

The result was a blow to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — the largest in opposition — which had hoped to capitalise on the nuclear controversy and rising prices at the next election.

The confidence vote was triggered when the Communist parties that gave the Government its parliamentary majority withdrew their support in protest over the deal, which they said was too pro-American. The BJP joined forces with the Communists and other opposition parties to try to bring down the Government. It was upstaged within the Opposition, however, by Mayawati, the lower-caste head of the Bahujan Samaj party, who persuaded several government allies to defect.

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