From correspondents in Delhi, India, 12:30 AM IST

Around 500 people including Right to Information (RTI) activists and various civil society groups' representatives Sunday held protests here, demanding an independent enquiry into the charges by three MPs that they were offered bribes ahead of Tuesday's trust vote in parliament.

They also demanded that tapes of a sting operation that is said to have captured political leaders offering bribes to the MPs should be made public.

'Around 500 people from several states were part of the protest. Nearly 75 RTI applications were collected which would be filed Monday to the Lok Sabha speaker (Somnath Chatterjee), asking for a copy of tapes of the sting operation,' said Manish Sisodia, an RTI activist who works with NGO Kabir.

During the trust vote debate in parliament July 22, three Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs had flashed wads of currency notes alleging that the Congress and the Samajwadi Party leaders had given them the money as bribe to abstain during the voting.

'We hope that the speaker will not reject our application citing the exemption clause as larger public interest overrides all exemptions,' Sisodia added.

Magsaysay award winner and RTI activist Arvind Kejriwal and senior advocate Prashant Bhushan were also part of the protest.

(Staff Writer, © IANS)