Indian parties flex election campaign muscles

NEW DELHI (AFP) — The dates for India's pending general election have yet to be set, but major parties have already begun unofficial campaigns, with Pakistan, terrorism and Hindu nationalism among the key issues.

The world's largest democratic exercise -- involving 670 million voters -- will cover three weeks in April and May, and neither the ruling Congress Party nor the main opposition BJP is expected to win enough seats to govern alone.

The Hindu nationalist BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) assembled its members last weekend in the central city of Nagpur for a brainstorming session, while Congress leaders met in Delhi to decide their election strategy.

Smarting after recent losses to its rival in state polls, the BJP flagged "good governance, development and security," while also reviving a pledge to build a Hindu temple on the ruins of a demolished 16th century mosque.

The hugely divisive temple project has been a Hindu-Muslim flashpoint since Hindu activists destroyed the mosque in 1992, triggering nationwide riots that left about 2,000 people dead.

"We will build the temple. With the help of legislation if need be," announced BJP president Rajnath Singh.

At its meet, the Congress highlighted flagship welfare programmes as proof that it had kept to its 2004 election promise to work for the benefit of the "aam admi" or common man.

Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi urged people to reject the BJP's policies of "polarisation, division and hatred," as she sought to position her party as "the voice of social justice, communal harmony and inclusiveness."

While neither party has the breadth of support to win an absolute majority, political analyst Rasheed Kidwai said "the initial advantage" rested with Congress, despite its difficulties with anti-incumbency sentiment.

The party did better than expected in the recent state polls when a BJP bid to paint the government as being weak on terrorism in the wake of the Mumbai attacks appeared to backfire.

"The government was seen to be acting in the face of the most hostile of circumstances. That seems to have influenced public opinion," Kidwai said.

Congress received a further boost last week when rival Pakistan admitted for the first time that the Mumbai attacks, that killed 165 people, were partly planned on Pakistani soil.

"With Pakistan owning up like that, the government has a major diplomatic victory in its kitty," said Kidwai.

The Pakistani admission and announcement that it had taken six suspects into custody caught many in India by surprise and was generally seen as reward for Delhi's strategy of bringing international pressure to bear on Islamabad.

Analyst Neerja Choudhury, columnist with the Indian Express newspaper, said until recently the BJP had two "clear and potent issues" to beat the Congress with -- terrorism and price rises.

Fuelled by galloping crude oil prices, inflation had climbed to 12.63 percent in August, topping 13-year highs.

Since then inflation has eased and, with the announcement from Islamabad, Choudhury said Congress had managed to turn the tables on the BJP, shifting the focus away from what the government had admitted was its initial intelligence failure over the Mumbai attacks.

"The BJP seems robbed of its main issues," she said.

One of the main points of debate among election forecasters is how the global economic slump will play with voters.

While India was cushioned from the initial fallout from the crisis, growth has slowed sharply and job losses are starting to mount.

Half a million workers were thrown out of work in the three months to December and an export lobby group forecasts the number will hit at least 1.5 million by the end of this fiscal year.

The Congress-led government has overseen a period of sustained growth and can argue that the economic slump was not of its making, but gloomy predictions for the near and medium future will be playing on voters' minds.

Kidwai predicted "a very complex" electoral result that would be followed by an equally tricky period of political horse-trading.

"Each of the main parties will aim to get a clear enough lead over the other to attract regional and smaller parties to its fold," Kidwai said.
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