NEW DELHI: India’s Congress party yesterday began the task of forming a government after the alliance it leads fell short of 11 seats for a majority in Parliament in nationwide elections.
Top Congress leaders including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, party President Sonia Gandhi, her political secretary Ahmed Patel and Defense Minister A.K. Antony met yesterday to decide on new allies that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) needs to form a government.
The alliance won 261 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha, or the lower house of Parliament. A party or alliance needs at least 272 seats to rule India. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance came a poor second with 159 seats. Individually, Congress won 205 seats and the BJP 116.
Congress did not seem keen on taking the support of the Samajwadi Party (SP) of Mulayam Singh Yadav, a former defense minister. The SP, which won 22 seats, all of them in the northern Uttar Pradesh state, voiced their willingness to join the UPA. “We will support a secular and non-communal government. What will be the shape and form of our support solely depends on them,” SP leader Amar Singh said.
Congress spokesman Rajiv Shukla responded: “The fact remains that both Lalu Yadav (of Rashtriya Janata Dal) and Mulayam Singh are not core allies (of Congress). They have not contested with us. They contested on their own and Congress contested on its own in both states.” The party of Lalu Prasad could win only four seats in Bihar after it refused to enter into an electoral understanding with Congress in the state.
Meanwhile, the leftist bloc mused on what led to its dismal performance with the combined tally slipping from 61 in 2004 to 24. The leaders who met yesterday included Prakash Karat, S.R. Pillai and Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India-Marxist; A.B. Bardhan and D. Raja of the Communist Party of India; T.J. Chandrachoodan of Revolutionary Socialist Party and Forward Bloc’s Debabrata Biswas and D. Devarajan. After a 90-minute meeting, Bardhan read out a statement that said that the leftist bloc would work as a responsible opposition in Parliament.
The BJP was equally at a loss to understand what went wrong. In its stronghold of Gujarat, even the projection of state Chief Minister Narendra Modi as a future prime minister could help it win only 15 out of 26 seats.
