BANGALORE,INDIA: Though the Opposition parties succeeded in preventing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from making a speech in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday, they could not stop him from being heard.

Dr Singh was forced to table his reply to the Motion of Confidence following uproar in the Lok Sabha. He later had his speech posted on his Web site.

The Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance sought the trust vote after the Left parties withdrew their support after the government went ahead with the nuclear deal.

The government won the confidence vote by a margin of 19 votes: 275 for and 256 against.

Though the prime minister had posted his speech on the Web site, it was unlikely to reach a majority of Indians. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the Internet penetration in the country was a mere 5.2 per cent, as of September 2007.

According to India’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRAI), the country had 3,130,000 broadband net connections as on March 31, 2008.

Meanwhile, neighbouring China, as on December 2007, boasted of an Internet penetration rate of 15.8 per cent. ITU said that country had 210,000,000 Internet users compared to India’s 60,000,000 users.

Though the Indian news media reported Dr Singh’s reply, not many were able to publish the speech in full due to space constraints.

Incidentally, Indian newspapers were feeling the pinch of increasing newsprint prices.