NEW
DELHI - After India's mammoth election exercise ended on
Monday, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
its allies had a lot less of the confidence that
prompted the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
to call parliamentary elections six months before
completing its five-year term in office.
If
anything, exit and opinion polls and analyses indicate
that the opposition Congress party stands an even chance
of cobbling together an alliance that would enable it to
hold the reins of national power for the first time
since 1996.
The BJP started out by turning the
election into one based on personalities in the belief
that the personality and stature of its leader, Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, would prevail over that
of Sonia Gandhi, the reclusive, Italian-born leader of
the Congress party and heir to the political legacy of
the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
Much was made of
Gandhi's foreign origins in the elections, the first
phase of which began on April 20. The BJP said it
planned to bring in legislation that would bar people
who were not racially Indian from holding high office.
But as campaigning progressed, the Congress
party made the tactical move of bringing into the fray
Gandhi's son Rahul, who represents the next generation
of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, and thus blunted the BJP
thrust against people of foreign origin.
At the
end of the fourth phase of polling Monday evening, which
involved an estimated 58 percent turnout among more than
210 million eligible voters, Congress party spokesman
Abhishek Singhvi announced that Sonia Gandhi would stake
claim to be prime minister only if the Congress party
emerged with a majority of its own.
Since no
single party can achieve a majority on its own in
India's gargantuan 543-seat parliament, Singhvi's
statement was seen as a signal that Congress was now
ready to sit together with its regional allies to thrash
out a workable "secular" arrangement that would keep the
BJP and its allies in the NDA out of power.
Counting begins on May 13 and results are
expected later that day, but both the BJP and Congress
have already begun scrambling to gain support from
powerful regional parties.
These include the
Samajwadi Party (SP) in northern Uttar Pradesh state,
the National Congress Party (NCP) in western
Maharashtra, the Left Front in West Bengal and the
pro-Dravidian parties in southern Tamil Nadu.
For all its setbacks as perceived by exit polls,
the BJP is still slated to emerge as the biggest single
political party and its leader Vajpayee is bound to be
given the first chance to form a government and prove
that it has majority support in parliament.
Vajpayee, who during his campaign stressed the
BJP's ability to lead coalitions, will have to contend
with a much-chastened Congress that is now ready to shed
its monolithic image and deal with regional partners.
But that was only after his colleagues expressed alarm
at a public confession made by the 79-year-old prime
minister that he was tired of leading coalitions.
One of India's leading political analysts,
Neerja Chowdhury, has in television interviews predicted
four possible scenarios in the post-poll phase -
starting with a repeat of the Vajpayee-led NDA. The
trouble with this is that several of the NDA's main
constituents are reported to have done badly in the
elections, but most especially the Telugu Desam Party
(TDP) of Chandrababu Naidu, the chief minister of the
southern state of Andhra Pradesh.
In the
adjacent state of Tamil Nadu, the party of Chief
Minister J Jayalalithaa is said to be trailing behind
another local party - whose leader, veteran politician M
Karunanidhi, announced Monday that his party would not
return to the NDA.
Another constituent of the
NDA that has fallen out with Vajpayee is the Bahujan
Samaj Party (BSP), which champions the cause of the
Dalits or people on the lowermost rungs of the Hindu
caste ladder.
The party's fiery leader, Mayawati
(one name) has sworn vengeance for her ouster as chief
minister of northern Uttar Pradesh state and corruption
cases initiated against her by the BJP leadership.
Chowdhury's other post-poll scenarios include a
Congress-driven government with a prime minister decided
on by consensus or even a "Third Front" government
supported from the outside by the Congress party.
Finally, she talks about a "Fourth Front",
supported rather than led, by the BJP. Such a front
could be made up of its more popular allies like the
Samta Dal (Equality Party) in eastern Bihar state led by
George Fernandes, currently defense minister in the NDA
coalition government.
According to Chowdhury a
Fourth Front government could once again be led by
Vajpayee given his acceptability among the allies as the
"moderate face" of the pro-Hindu BJP.
Several of
the constituents of the NDA are believed to have
suffered a loss in popularity as a result of aligning
with the right-wing BJP, which is seen as
business-friendly and unwilling to rein in some of its
openly communal leaders, such as Narendra Modi, chief
minister of western Gujarat state.
Modi and his
government were indicted recently by the Supreme Court
for behaving like "modern-day Neros" during the
anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat two years ago that
resulted in more than 1,000 deaths.
On Monday,
the political uncertainty looming ahead in India had its
effects on the financial markets, which saw a 2 percent
drop in the prices of shares and bonds.
The
Vajpayee government has been popular with the affluent
middle classes and urbanites, people who increasingly
use the Internet to buy and sell shares and have readily
subscribed to the BJP's election slogan of an "India
Shining", but others out of this loop are not as pleased
with the BJP-led government.
