NEW DELHI, 23 March 2004 — A new opinion poll puts Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee streets ahead of his rival ahead of national elections next month, the Times of India said.
A poll of 2,000 people carried in 10 major Indian cities found 70 percent thought Vajpayee was best qualified to be re-elected.
Just 27 percent favored his main opponent, Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi, according to the poll carried out by the Times and TNS polling agency.
Parliamentary elections are due in India in five phases beginning April 20.
The elections are tipped as a direct contest between Vajpayee and the Italian-born Sonia, who entered public life seven years after the assassination of her husband, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in 1991.
Meanwhile, Lok Janshakti Party President Ram Vilas Paswan yesterday said the issue of Sonia’s foreign origin, raised by the BJP, was baseless and his party had no objection to her becoming the prime minister of the country. Paswan told mediapersons here: “If a person of foreign origin can become a member of Parliament, then how can he or she be stopped from becoming the prime minister?”
The NDA, particularly the BJP, always raised unimportant issues like the foreign origin and Ayodhya to mislead the people and divert their attention from basic issues like poverty, unemployment and illiteracy and the problems of the farmers and laborers, he said. “The coming Lok Sabha elections will prove a matter of life and death for the NDA as it will not return to power,” Paswan said.
He said the slogans of “feel good” and “India shining” were an insult to a majority of people not even having access to basic amenities of life. He appealed to the opposition, particularly the Congress, to issue a document exposing the failures of the NDA government.
Meanwhile, the LJP leader said his party would contest 40 Lok Sabha seats in the country including 10 in Uttar Pradesh. He said talks of an alliance with the Congress were in the final stages. He said the party also aimed to take out a rath yatra from Lucknow on Aug. 23 with a view to strengthening its base in the state.
The Samajwadi Party has also criticized the BJP for raising the foreign origin issue of Sonia once again. Party General Secretary Amar Singh said here that now the issue had lost its significance, as the Supreme Court had already given its directive in this connection.
