India's ruling Hindu nationalists suffered a shock defeat yesterday in the world's largest election as the Gandhi dynasty Congress party surged back to power after a campaign appealing to the rural poor.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee resigned to President Abdul Kalam, who asked him to remain as caretaker premier until a new government is formed.
"We accept the people's mandate with all politeness," said Venkaiah Naidu, president of Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which had been confident of securing a new term in the early election.
The Congress party, led by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born heir to India's most famous political dynasty, said it will ask Kalam, the ceremonial head of state, to let it form a new government.
Congress, which left power in 1996 after ruling India for 45 years, was to meet late yesterday to decide on its choice for prime minister with many pushing for Gandhi, the 57-year-old widow of slain former premier Rajiv Gandhi.
"All the workers want it, party officials want it. Now she will have to decide whether she wants to be the prime minister," Patel said.
The Hindu nationalists systematically denounced Gandhi during the campaign, saying she was still a foreigner even if she only ever appears in Indian dress and speaks in fluent, if accented, Hindi.
With 465 of the 543 seats declared by the Election Commission, Congress and its allies had won 190 seats compared with 164 for Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its partners.
The balance will be held largely by populist regional parties whose support will be crucial for a stable government.
The BJP, which has led coalitions since 1998 as the first avowedly Hindu party to rule secular India, called the election five months ahead of schedule to capitalize on 79-year-old Vajpayee's popularity and booming economic growth.
But Congress turned the BJP's "India Shining" re-election slogan on its head, portraying the BJP's slick campaign which included mobile telephone messages to voters as out of touch with millions of rural poor who lack proper electricity and water.
"The economic policies of BJP, which did achieve many things they had set out to achieve, alienated much of the electorate which are much too poor and marginalized to benefit from them," said political analyst Pran Chopra.
"It has cost it the support of a very large section of the population. The sympathy and concern for the hardships of the poor were not reflected in the BJP's policies," he said.
The Bombay Stock Exchange rose 0.77 percent yesterday on hopes of a stable government, recovering from a sharp fall in early trade on fears of a hung parliament, dealers said.
Investors had been largely supportive of Vajpayee, who had pushed free-market reforms in Asia's third biggest economy, or a hung parliament.
Congress has promised to continue privatization but with a "human face." The party has socialist roots and promoted a state-run economy for decades but launched India's liberalization drive in 1991.
India's historic rival Pakistan expressed hope that the new government will proceed with a dialogue between the two countries initiated last year by Vajpayee, who declared he was on his last bid to make peace in South Asia.
Congress spokesman Anand Sharma told reporters the party "is committed to working towards creating lasting peace in the region."
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