NEW DELHI, 8 December 2003 — A landslide in key regional elections by India’s ruling Hindu extremists has raised new doubts about opposition chief Sonia Gandhi, the controversial Italian-born heir to the Congress party political dynasty.
Analysts said the Dec. 1 election gains showed Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was the undisputed national leader.
“The results are a big boost to Vajpayee,” said political analyst Yashwant Deshmukh.
He said the polls will “have a demoralizing effect for the Congress and an even more debilitating one for its president, Sonia Gandhi.”
The Congress lost 212 seats in the four state elections, with Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wresting control of three of them.
The Congress could retain only the capital Delhi where a string of flyovers, a metro system and improved power and water supplies ensured Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit was returned to power.
The wins in three northern Hindi-speaking states — Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan — will be a major organizational bonus for the party which had lost a string of state polls in recent years.
While the regional elections were fought primarily on local issues, they are seen as a personal defeat for Sonia, the widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was assassinated by Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels in 1991.
While Sonia is heir to a dynasty dating back to India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, her Italian origin and faltering Hindi have been a constant target for the BJP which accuses her of not understanding India.
Sonia, who turns 57 on Tuesday, took over the Congress leadership in 1998 after the party’s historic defeat to the BJP in parliamentary polls.
While the BJP was re-elected in 1999 elections, Congress had until last week steadily gained ground in state elections, in large part due to the records of regional leaders.
Analysts say Sonia still struggles to seem like a credible leader compared with Vajpayee, who turns 79 later this month and has half a century of experience as a parliamentarian.
Opinion polls published in the lead-up to the state polls showed support for Sonia as a prime minister was only 30 percent compared with 70 percent for Vajpayee.
A poll by India Today magazine showed Vajpayee’s rating as prime minister even in Congress-ruled states ranged from 48 to 62 percent.
Some Congress party members have begun mentioning Sonia’s daughter Priyanka or son Rahul, who are both in their early 30s, as potential successors to restore the electoral magic of the family dynasty.
Deshmukh said the state polls reinforced the view that Vajpayee was set to remain prime minister because there was no credible alternative.
“Even though the issues were local, we should not forget that Sonia campaigned vigorously in these polls, over a 100 meetings, and yet they lost so badly,” Deshmukh said.
Sonia expressed “deep disappointment” over the debacle and told dejected Congress supporters it was time for India’s oldest party “to pull up our socks”.
Vinod Mehta, the editor of Outlook magazine and a frequent critic of the BJP, wrote a column in the latest issue titled: “Sonia, please wake up”.
“Sonia Gandhi has to put her house in order and reorder her priorities,” Mehta wrote. “Otherwise, she could be out of a job herself.”
The issue is taking on increasing urgency with the BJP saying national parliamentary elections will be held as scheduled by October next year. However, there has been speculation they could call an early election to take advantage of the latest state victories.
