Congress sweeps to Indian polls win
With results still coming in from the Election Commission, the
Congress grouping was on track to win around 250 seats against 160 for
the main opposition bloc headed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“The people of India have spoken and they have spoken with great
clarity,” Manmohan Singh told a joint press conference with Congress
president Sonia Gandhi. Although the Congress alliance was still
expected to fall short of the 272 seats required for a majority in the
543-seat parliament, its projected margin of victory was much greater
than exit polls had predicted. A shortfall of just 20 to 30 seats would
allow it to pick and choose from India’s myriad regional parties to make
up the numbers needed for a viable government. “I would expect all
secular parties to come together to give this country a stable, strong,
purposeful government,” Singh said, adding that it was time for India to
show the world that it “stands as one as a nation.”
Congress was expected to pick up more than 190 seats in its own right
— the party’s best showing since 1991. Conceding defeat, the Hindu
nationalist BJP admitted that the results were “far below” expectations.
“We accept this verdict of the people,” said senior BJP leader Arun
Jaitley.
The picture that emerged Saturday was of a far more stable government
that would be less vulnerable to the whims of its coalition partners.
“The people of India know what is good for them and they always make
the right choice,” Sonia Gandhi said.
Congress spokeswoman Ambika Soni said party leaders and their allies
would meet later in the day to discuss how they would go about building
the support they need to govern India’s 1.1 billion people.
Before Saturday’s result, conventional wisdom dictated that the
Congress alliance would need the support of its former communist
partners who withdrew from the ruling coalition last year in protest
over a nuclear deal with the United States.
But the Left was trounced in its stronghold states of West Bengal and
Kerala, leaving its leaders to concede that it had lost any kingmaker
status.
“We have suffered a major setback,” admitted Prakash Karat, general
secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
According to the constitution, a new government must be in place by
June 2. AFP
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