NEW DELHI, 30 December 2003 — The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has scoffed at suggestions that opposition leader Sonia Gandhi might put aside ambitions to be prime minister in her attempt to build a rival coalition ahead of elections next year.

Gandhi’s Congress party dominated India’s political landscape for decades after independence in 1947, but has been out of office since the early 1990s.

Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, a Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman, said yesterday that Congress was acting in desperation.

“They don’t have a leader. They don’t have a program. They don’t have any major ally,” Naqvi told The Associated Press. “The Congress party is trying its luck ... it is fighting for its survival. This attempt to create a coalition is not going anywhere.”

At a rare news conference on Sunday, Gandhi said she wanted to form a multiparty alliance to take on the BJP-led coalition government and left open the question of her being prime minister if it wins elections due next year.

“This is a question to be decided by the people of the country,” she told reporters in Bombay. “We never impose our leadership on other parties,” she said.

Gandhi failed to build a coalition in April 1999 when Vajpayee’s government fell apart in Parliament. She tried to form an alternative grouping but dozens of lawmakers backed out when Congress insisted that the Italian-born Gandhi would be prime minister. The miscalculation spelled political disaster.

Fresh elections were ordered, and Vajpayee returned with a new government that is still in power and will enter the looming campaign with confidence bolstered by economic growth and improving relations with its neighbor Pakistan.

Vajpayee’s bloc of so many parties has stuck together despite sharp internal differences. “The success and stability of the Vajpayee-led coalition has created a very strong feel-good factor in the country as well as among the alliance partners,” Naqvi said. “They (Congress) are trying to copy us. They are looking for partners. They don’t have any partners.”

Congress has been out of power now for seven years. Traditionally used to ruling in its own right, it has often cold-shouldered possible allies.

But no single party has won a Parliament majority by itself in India since 1991, when Congress last won office after the assassination of Gandhi’s husband, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

This time Congress acknowledges that it must build its own alliance to defeat the government headed by Vajpayee’s Hindu fundamentalist BJP — that’s been accused of capitalizing on communal tensions with India’s Muslim minority.

Congress stands on a secular platform established by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. His daughter, Indira Gandhi, later became leader but was assassinated in 1984.

Her son, Rajiv, took her place as prime minister, but was killed in 1991. Perpetuating the dynasty, Sonia Gandhi took on the leadership of the party in 1998.

Despite her pedigree, critics accuse her of being aloof. Her foreign origins also seem to count against her as a realistic alternative for prime minister.

Apparently sensing that the top job may not be hers, Gandhi on the weekend called for unity among the many parties that oppose Vajpayee. “If we want to defeat the anti-secular forces, then all of us should put aside our differences to form a compact alliance,” said Gandhi.

Meanwhile, the multiparty ruling coalition will see another minor partner withdraw, but the decision does not affect the stability of Vajpayee’s government.

The Marumalarchi Dravida Munnethra Kazhagam has four members in the lower house of Parliament — two of them federal ministers.

M. Kannappan, minister for non-conventional energy, and Gingee N. Ramachandran, junior minister for finance, will resign from the Cabinet today, senior party official L. Ganesan told reporters in the southern city of Madras in Tamil Nadu state.

The party’s withdrawal will reduce the coalition’s strength in Parliament to 17 partners and 308 members, a comfortable majority in the 544-member lower house before next year’s general elections.

Ganesan said the party decided to pull out because the ruling National Democratic Alliance was seen to be coveting Tamil Nadu’s state government, a political rival of the MDMK.