Poll: Indian PM will fall short of majority
An opinion poll ahead of tomorrow’s penultimate phase of India’s general elections showed Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s coalition surging ahead of its rivals, but falling short of a majority in parliament.
Voters in seven states tomorrow choose 83 MPs. India’s five-phase elections conclude on May 10 and ballot-counting begins three days later.
Vajpayee’s coalition went into the elections bolstered by a booming economy and the prime minister’s popular peace overtures with rival Pakistan. Pre-election polls suggested the coalition would be returned to power with a comfortable majority of the 543 elected seats in the lower house.
But exit polls after the first three rounds of voting in April showed an unexpected decline in the number of seats projected for Vajpayee’s multiparty coalition, the National Democratic Alliance.
The latest Indian Express-New Delhi Television opinion poll published today said the NDA was likely to fare better in the second-to-last lap of elections and position itself for a win of 245-265 seats – well ahead of opponents but still short of the majority mark of 272.
The main opposition Congress party and its allies were projected to win 180-200 seats in the Lok Sabha, with smaller groups and independents claiming the remaining seats.
Another opinion poll by the independent Star News television channel yesterday predicted 267 to 279 seats for the NDA and 169-181 seats for the Congress and its allies.
More than 107 million people are eligible to vote tomorrow at 108,583 polling stations in Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu-Kashmir, Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh states.
Authorities have deployed extra police force to avoid violence during voting in the remote northeastern Arunachal Pradesh where a students’ union and a little-known separatist rebel group have asked people to boycott the elections.
The students and the guerrilla group are protesting the inclusion on voter lists of nearly 1,500 people they allege are Buddhist refugees from neighbouring Bangladesh.
Voting in the general elections is staggered over three weeks to allow security forces to move from one hotspot to another to deter political violence, rebel attacks and stealing of voting machines.
