Gruelling election campaign enters final phase

Campaigning moved into its final lap as political parties took their canvassing marked by much mudslinging but surprisingly free of violence.

The gruelling Indian election campaign moved into its final lap Tuesday as political parties took their canvassing marked by much mudslinging but surprisingly free of violence towards a clamorous crescendo.

HT Image

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's coalition is widely predicted to win the five-phase polls from April 20 to May 10, with the results likely to be known on May 13.

However, given the unpredictability of Indian elections and the shrewdness of the voter, opinion polls appear to differ on the final outcome, with a section predicting major gains for opposition parties.

A total of 675 million people are eligible to cast their ballot in a vast and colourful exercise, where voting decisions are vulnerable to factors ranging from monsoons to vegetable prices to a game of cricket.

Vajpayee, Sonia Gandhi, an array of top politicians, movie stars, community workers and others are among the aspirants from some 750 parties in the fray.

The fortunes of thousands of candidates will be decided when 141 of the total of 543 parliamentary constituencies spread across India go to the polls on the first day of balloting.

Electronic voting machines will be used in the entire process for the first time.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which began its campaign on a buoyant note after winning three out of four Congress-ruled states in December, sees voters returning it to power on the back of a booming economy and what it terms a "feel good factor".

But amid apprehensions within the party about whether its claims of a 'shining India' influenced the vast middle class, the BJP has also kept up a strident and personalised attack against Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party president.

Italy-born Gandhi, her son Rahul - also a candidate from Uttar Pradesh - and daughter Priyanka have been fending off a relentless campaign against her foreign roots and her alleged role in the 1987 Bofors kickbacks scandal when her husband Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister.

Perhaps for the first time, with Vajpayee projected as the mascot of the BJP as well as its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Indian elections have taken on a presidential hue on the lines of the American elections.

By pitting Vajpayee against Gandhi, the BJP hopes to cash in on the stark, unflattering contrast between the veteran parliamentarian and the opposition leader who has inherited the leadership mantle because she married into India's most well known political family.

In three years, the BJP is seen to have reinvented itself into a pro-development party eager to latch on to Vajpayee's image of a moderate among hardliners. The 79-year-old bachelor poet, known for his natural charm and wit, enjoys an approval rating far higher than his party.

It is a different Vajpayee from the seemingly tired and ailing person whose health was of serious concern after twin knee surgeries reduced his movement to a shuffle.

Only a year ago, the shadow of a leadership tussle faced Vajpayee when his deputy LK Advani was described by party president M Venkaiah Naidu as his "twin mascot" and the "iron man."

As the much-in-demand Vajpayee criss-crosses the country in his prime ministerial jet while Advani traverses the country in a customized minibus that has its inevitable breakdowns, it is clear who is more popular.

For the Congress, it is a moment of reckoning. A section in the party has for some time harboured doubts about Sonia Gandhi's leadership, and this section could grow more vocal if Gandhi does not deliver this time too.

Under her helm, the 119-year-old party suffered its worst tally with just 114 seats in the 1999 elections.

Analysts say the Congress has to win at least the same number of seats, or up its score, for it to avoid a major setback and further marginalizing in Indian politics.

"The Congress will continue to remain a major force, but it will find it very hard to cover the growing gap with the BJP if it does not shape up now," said an analyst. "It has to come out of its time warp."

The Congress governed India for nearly four decades after its independence from Britain in 1947 and is credited with forging a secular and modern nation, but it began to lose its mass base simultaneously with the rise of the BJP.

The dispirited and somewhat disoriented party sees new hope in the form of Sonia's son Rahul, mirrored in the image of his late father and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

A party that has depended on members of the illustrious Nehru-Gandhi family for most of its history is also depending to a considerable extent on Sonia Gandhi's daughter Priyanka, who is campaigning in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous and politically consequential state with 80 parliamentary seats.

In the first phase, all of Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya and Mizoram and some constituencies in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur and Orissa will witness polling.

The union territories of Andaman and Nicobar, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu also vote on April 20.