NEW DELHI, 12 May 2004 — India’s Hindu nationalist-led government called elections six months early because it felt confident of winning an even bigger majority in Parliament, based on a booming economy and a peace process with Pakistan.
But exit polls from the three-week voting that ended Monday predict just the opposite — a loss of 45-50 seats for the National Democratic Alliance headed by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and a chance for the opposition Congress and leftist parties to unite and form a new government.
Such a big loss could indicate a failure by the NDA to address the concerns of the country’s poor majority and underestimated concerns about the pro-Hindu roots of the main governing party.
Vote counting begins Thursday, but exit polls show Vajpayee’s alliance short of the 272 seats needed for a majority in the 543-member lawmaking lower house of Parliament. The NDA claimed about 302 seats before Parliament was dissolved for the elections.
The alliance, led by Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party, told voters India was “shining” with 8 percent economic growth, development projects such as a national highway system and plans to connect India’s rivers. It was also opening the economy to foreign investment, bringing new jobs and products.
The main opposition Congress party and its allies championed the rural poor, saying they have been left out of the new prosperity.
When the new government forms, “Whether it’s Congress or BJP, they will need to look at power, water, housing and health care,” said Shekhar Datta, director of the Industrial Development Bank of India.
Congress also pressed India’s secular tradition, contrasting it with the darkest blot on Vajpayee’s record: the killing of nearly 1,000 Muslims by Hindu rioters in Gujarat state in 2002 while his government did nothing. Eighty percent of India’s 1 billion people are Hindus, who profess tolerance toward the nation’s religious minorities and live peacefully, most of the time, with their 140 million Muslim neighbors. The Hindus-first agenda of Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party that brought it political prominence may have reached a limit with voters after the Gujarat massacres.
Yesterday, the Times of India, on its front page, quoted sources within Vajpayee’s party as saying that he would consider making no claim to govern if the exit polls prove right about a huge loss of NDA seats.
“Vajpayee, according to these sources, feels he was pushed into an early election and he would view NDA’s inability to cross 250 as a loss of mandate,” even though he would still control more seats than anyone else, The Times reported.
Even so, others say Vajpayee, who for six years has held together an alliance of more than a dozen parties, has a better chance to form a new multiparty government than the Italian-born, less experienced Sonia Gandhi, who heads the Congress party.
“The chances of the NDA making it to the finishing line first are much better than those of the Congress,” said political analyst Pran Chopra, mainly because the NDA needs to gather fewer new partners.
Congress, its allies and the leftist parties together would only reach the 245-250 seat mark that the exit polls say Vajpayee’s coalition already has. Sonia last had a chance to oust Vajpayee in 1999, when one of the prime minister’s biggest allies defected.
However, she failed to form a coalition due to conflicts with potential partners over who would be India’s prime minister and objections to her foreign origins. The result was Congress’ worst defeat in 52 years.
A similar power struggle could hurt Gandhi’s efforts to find partners this time even though the leftist parties are committed to supporting a Congress-led, secularist government.
