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NEW DELHI: India’s ruling Congress party made early gains Friday in vote counting for five state elections that are seen as a test for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after a series of damaging scandals.
One of the most eagerly awaited results was in the largest of the five states, West Bengal, where the world’s longest-serving, democratically elected Communist government was tipped to lose power after 34 years.
Congress is in alliance there with the Trinamool Congress led by firebrand populist Mamata Banerjee who, according to all opinion polls, was expected to defeat the Communist-led Left Front in a landslide.
Early results gave Congress the edge in two of the remaining four states — southern Kerala and northeastern Assam — but predicted a reversal in one, southern Tamil Nadu.
In the tiny union territory of Pondicherry, exit polls and early results were inconclusive.
The state polls are seen as a mini-referendum on the popularity of 78-year-old Singh and his government, which has been paralysed by corruption and mismanagement scandals for much of the past year.
“There is a sense of anxiety in the Congress about how the party and its allies perform,” Sanjay Kumar, a political analyst at the Centre for the Developing Societies think-tank in New Delhi, told AFP.
“A good performance will bring back the much-needed confidence at the federal level. People’s support will give them an image makeover.
“It seems the allies will save them.”
A victory for Banerjee’s Trinamool in West Bengal, home to the once-grand but now crumbling city of Kolkata, will mark the end of an era in modern Indian politics.
The Left Front, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), had won every election in the eastern state since 1977.
But successive losses in federal and local polls have left the communists struggling for survival.
One opinion poll forecast the Trinamool alliance would win 215 of the 294 state assembly seats, while the communists would get just 74.
Cheering crowds gathered outside Banerjee’s modest one-storey home beside a canal in Kolkata. A big wooden and bamboo structure had been erected in front, where she was expected to celebrate her victory.
“It’s a victory of Ma, Mathi and Manush (Mother, Land and People),” chanted hundreds of jubilant supporters as local television stations showed early counting confirming earlier exit polls.
The diminutive woman known as “didi”, or elder sister, opted to stay indoors and was said to be watching the results on television.
“People want the fall of the Communist regime,” said political analyst Sabyasachi Basu Roychowdhury, a professor at Rabindra Bharati University. “It’s a profoundly important moment for the people of the state who have an intense desire for change.”
The anti-incumbency mood in West Bengal has been fuelled by anger among farmers over being forced to sell fertile land holdings under a government job-creation drive to lure industry.
In the tropical southern state of Kerala, early returns showed Congress with a slight lead over the incumbent Communist government and it was seen as ahead in the northeastern state of Assam.
But it looked set to lose a key ally in the southern state of Tamil Nadu where the incumbent Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam was expected to lose to another regional party led by the former movie star J. Jayalalithaa.
With no party holding an overall majority in India’s federal parliament, state elections play a crucial role in shifting the national power balance, as the main parties seek to maintain or forge regional alliances.
