India’s governing party loses four key state elections

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s party lost elections in four key states, according to near final results released today, in a potentially destabilising blow to his two-year-old national coalition.

The results from state assembly elections on February 14, 18 and 21 showed Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies being swept from power in three states, and failing to gain the fourth.

Now, only four of India’s 28 states have a BJP government, a position of weakness for the core party in Vajpayee’s 22 party national alliance. His previous government was brought down in 1999 when an allied party, sensing a change in the political wind, withdrew support.

The poor results come at a precarious time. India’s military is on war alert on the border with Pakistan, Hindu nationalist supporters are criticising Vajpayee, and his government is preparing to present the national budget to Parliament this week.

The worst defeat was in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, with 99 million voters, and politically the most powerful. Eight of India’s 12 prime ministers, including Vajpayee, have come from Uttar Pradesh.

Campaigning on anti-terrorism, anti-Pakistan, and security issues in Uttar Pradesh, home to India’s largest population of Muslims, the BJP lost almost half its seats, dropping from 158 to 88.

The socialist Samajwadi Party and its two small allies won 149 of Uttar Pradesh’s 403 assembly seats, with a voter turnout of about 53%. They emphasised the state’s shoddy infrastructure, and lack of development, charging that corruption had siphoned off revenues. But they will have to collect support from at least six other parties to form a government.

A major issue brewing in the state is the vow of Hindu nationalists to build a temple to the god Ram at Ayodhya, the site of a Muslim mosque torn down by a Hindu mob in 1992. More than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in subsequent nationwide riots.

The Hindu groups have criticised Vajpayee for not giving them full support. Although he favours the temple construction, he is constrained by secular parties in his national alliance.