On a day supreme court blasted the CBI for keeping it in the dark about sharing the coal blocks allocation scam’s status report with the law minister and other bureaucrats, the Congress-led UPA government was left completely isolated in parliament, as most political parties walked out of Lok Sabha without staying to discuss the union budget, rail budget and other issues slated for discussion in one go. 

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Meanwhile, Ahmed Patel, political secretary to the Congress president, took Sonia Gandhi’s message to prime minister Manmohan Singh on law minister Ashwini Kumar’s continuance in the union cabinet. While Patel is learnt to have discussed the issue in detail with Singh, the prime minister is likely to announce a final decision on the issue in Lok Sabha later in the day.

While a visibly perturbed Sonia Gandhi was present in Lok Sabha, prime minister Manmohan Singh joined the House after the opposition walked out on Tuesday, shortly after the apex court censured both the CBI and the government.

Appearing tense and pensive, Gandhi was seen listening intently to the speech of leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj, who slammed the government as the “most corrupt since independence”. While Swaraj said, "There is scam after scam, each breaking the record of the previous one... how can they call us irresponsible?", Gandhi was seen biting her nails, wrinkling her eyes and turning sideways so often that she gave the impression of being taut and restless.

In an interesting development that could signal a possible split in the Trinamool Congress, Sougata Roy wanted a discussion, while his party colleague Sudip Bandopadhyaya rose to criticise the railway budget and sought to walk out.

Even the Akali Dal and the Shiv Sena stayed back to discuss the budget, thereby hinting at a possible split in the opposition NDA as well.

In contrast, AIADMK and DMK, the two Dravidian parties and known bitter enemies, came together for the first time to criticise UPA-2 on the floor of Lok Sabha and later walked out, not participating in the discussions.

While finance minister P Chidambaram was seen listening carefully to ADMK’s Thambidurai’s speech on Tamil Nadu being neglected in the union budget but did not rise to answer, as it could have made the situation more tense.