NEW DELHI/TRIVANDRUM, 29 April 2004 — India’s ruling Hindu nationalists have moved the might of their final campaign to the key heartland state of Uttar Pradesh to swing voters and win a majority.
Senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party have been sent to the state to take charge of what looks like a do-or-die battle and maximise gains in India’s most populous state in the last two stages of voting, a senior BJP official said.
The shift in gears midway through the staggered, five-stage polls came after TV exit polls following Monday’s third round of voting showed the BJP and its allies would struggle to reach the half-way mark of 273 seats to form a government.
The BJP brushed aside the exit polls. But analysts say the party is anxious to ensure a majority as post-poll bargaining with small parties for support to sew up a coalition could force policy compromises.
Nearly two-thirds of Uttar Pradesh’s 80 seats in the 545-member lower house of Parliament are still up for grabs and BJP leaders said the race was wide open. “Uttar Pradesh is important...we are trying to extract the maximum possible,” said BJP spokesman Prakash Javdekar.
BJP leaders said the party had also appealed to the hard-line Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, its cadre-based ideological parent, to mobilize its members in Uttar Pradesh to campaign for the party. The final two rounds of voting are due on May 5 and 10. Votes will be counted on May 13 with results expected the same day.
The election has been marred by violence in disputed Kashmir where anti-India militants have called for a poll boycott. Two people were killed and 79 wounded in a spate of blasts across the troubled region yesterday as the rebels stepped up attacks to enforce the boycott.
Meanwhile, a BJP delegation met Deputy Election Commissioner Noor Mohammed yesterday to complain about large-scale violence including killings and destruction of electronic voting machines by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) workers in Chhapra constituency in Bihar.
BJP candidate Rajiv Pratap Rudy is pitted against RJD leader Laloo Prasad Yadav from Chhapra. Demanding a repoll in Chhapra and Ghazipur (Uttar Pradesh), the BJP has submitted video films and photos to EC, showing large-scale rigging and violence in the constituency.
While the Election Commissioner yesterday ordered repoll in 502 polling stations in Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh, it has kept its decision “pending” on repoll or countermanding of elections in Chhapra, Siwan and Ghanzipur.
CPI-M Sets Terms
The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), the third largest group in the dissolved Lok Sabha that was of late willing to support a Congress-led government, has started singing a different tune with projections predicting a hung Parliament.
Senior leaders of the party are now talking of a repeat of the 1996-98 third front government without the BJP and the Congress party. Congress supported the third front government from outside.
Dropping the early hints yesterday, two top leaders made it clear that they would not support a Congress-led government that pursues economic liberalization initiated during its earlier stint.
CPI-M General Secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet and politburo member Prakash Karat, who are currently campaigning against the Congress-led front in Kerala, said the party would try to form an alternative government opposed to the economic policies of the Congress and the NDA.
“Congress has become a B team of BJP. People are not going to let the Congress carrying on the same policies of the Vajpayee government,” Karat said while addressing an election rally in Trivandrum. “There will be an anti-BJP government after the elections and we will shape its policies,” he added.
Surjeet said the question of who should lead the government could be decided only after the elections.
“We are working for an alternative,” he said adding that the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi is a non-issue and the CPI-M would decide on joining a government after the elections on the basis of the economic policies.
Both leaders unequivocally said support to any government hinges on whether it would continue the reforms including privatization of public sector companies, initiated by the Congress government of P. V. Narasimha Rao and pursued by successive governments.
Surjeet said the question of who should lead the government could be decided only after the elections.
“We are working for an alternative,” he said adding that the foreign origin of Sonia Gandhi is a non-issue and the CPI-M would decide on joining a government after the elections on the basis of the economic policies of the new disposition.
According to the reports, Surjeet, responsible for cobbling third front governments in the past, is already in touch parties like Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajvadi Party, which rules Uttar Pradesh state and has the potential to win 35 of its 80 seats.
Surjeet said the CPI-M had no direct alliance with the Congress anywhere. “In Tamil Nadu, Congress has tied up with the Dravida Munnetra Kazhakam (DMK) and we have an understanding with DMK. There is no alliance between our party and the Congress,” he said.
