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| Sunday, 9 May 2004 |
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India's leaders make last-ditch appeals for votes NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Leaders of India's main parties made last-ditch appeals for votes on Friday ahead of the final, toughest round of a marathon multi-stage election that has proved far closer than expected. Worried his National Democratic Alliance may not win a majority, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee unleashed a campaign and advertising blitz selling a message of prosperity and stability and attacking the opposition Congress party. "If the NDA does not get a majority, the country will slip into political anarchy," the 79-year-old Vajpayee was quoted as saying at an election rally in Bulandshah in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Vajpayee attacked the opposition as divided and said there would be a new prime minister "every six months" if they came to power, the Press Trust of India reported. Other top leaders of his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) addressed rallies across 16 states ahead of Monday's vote for 182 seats in the 545-member lower house. Italian-born Congress leader Sonia Gandhi addressed tens of thousands of supporters at a beachside rally in Madras, capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, attacking the BJP for fanning tensions between Hindus and Muslims. "On the 10th of May, through your vote you will be freeing the country from the BJP/NDA government," she said, as Congress party flags fluttered in the breeze next to the hammer and sickle flags of their regional communist allies. "The foundations built by the Congress party have been shaken for the past five years, unemployment has risen like never before, religious minorities have been targeted, even textbooks have been rewritten. Worst of all, corruption has been rampant." Monday's vote will be the toughest by far for the BJP. The fifth round of the three-week-long election is concentrated in Tamil Nadu and the communist bastion of West Bengal, both large states where the BJP has little presence and is dependent on regional partners. Another focus of interest is Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, where some constituencies vote on Monday. Investors have been scrutinising every twist and turn of exit polls as the race tightens, fearing that a government with a weak majority could slow or stall reforms. Shares on the main Bombay exchange fell over 1.5 percent on Friday on uncertainty about the outcome. The latest exit and opinion poll, issued on Friday evening by Star News, predicted that Vajpayee and his coalition partners would win between 267 and 279 seats in parliament, with 273 needed for a majority. But other polls have been less positive for Vajpayee, and one, by NDTV, has suggested the NDA could come in with between 245 and 265 seats. Leading pollster Yogendra Yadav predicted that the BJP and its allies would win just 60 to 65 seats in the final round, down from 82 five years ago, leaving it struggling to form a government with between 240 and 260 seats overall. "If they get 260, they have a very good chance of forming a government, and if it's 250 my sense is they will scrape through," he said. "But 245 is the red level. If they touch that, it's complicated. Under 245 and the opposition - Congress, its allies and the left - would outnumber them." In West Bengal, where the communists have run the world's longest-running elected government for more than a quarter of a century, red flags flew from mud houses across the state. The communists, who are not officially allied to Congress but would probably join them in opposing the BJP, have mocked the ruling coalition's feel-good campaign of peace and prosperity. One wall painting made by communist supporters in the state capital, Calcutta, depicted Vajpayee dressed as a soccer player kicking a common man and telling him to feel good while jobs were being axed. |
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