'Party paid for confidence vote'

A United States diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks says that a political aide told a US embassy official that India's ruling Congress party officials paid some members of Parliament 100 million rupees ($2.9 million) each to get them to back Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Government in a 2008 confidence vote.

The claims, by an aide to a Congress party leader, Satish Sharma, were in a US diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to Reuters by a third party.