Policemen take rest in front of an election campaign banner of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at Udhampur, 65km from Jammu, the winter capital of Kashmir, yesterday. According to a new opinion poll, the BJP is expected to win an overall majority in elections.

 

Agencies/New Delhi

 

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies were forecast to win an overall majority in elections, according to the latest opinion survey yesterday, dealing another blow to the beleaguered ruling Congress Party.

Eight days on from the start of the world’s biggest election, the survey for the NDTV network predicted for the first time that the BJP would not have to seek new partners in order to govern, giving it more freedom to implement its agenda.

The poll also forecast that Congress, which has governed India for most of the post-independence era, would hit an all-time low in results on May 16, highlighting the damage wrought by allegations of a split leadership.

Two books released this week have portrayed outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a weak leader who struggled to control his cabinet over the last decade while party president Sonia Gandhi called the shots.

There was further bad news for Congress when official data showed the year-on-year inflation rate accelerated in March to a three-month high of 5.7%, dashing hopes of an interest rate cut to boost the struggling economy.

With Congress in disarray, NDTV forecast that the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would win 275 seats in the 543-seat Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, 16 more than predicted in the last survey a month ago.

The BJP on its own would win 226 seats but it would avoid the need to find new coalition partners since its existing allies would push it over the 50% threshold, the survey said. Congress would see its tally of seats drop to a record low of 92, the same poll projected.

India’s opinion polls are historically unreliable, partly because of the country’s vast and diverse electorate. But the latest one reflects a growing trend of support for the BJP and flagging popularity for Congress.

“There are two clear trends in the groundswell, anger against the Congress and the hope in Narendra Modi,” Arun Jaitley, one of the BJP’s senior leaders, said in a blog, referring to the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate.

“My own view is that the actual poll always results in the frontrunner getting more than what is projected,” he added.

All previous polls have forecast that the BJP-led alliance would fall short of a majority, thus forcing it to seek additional partners who would likely want to temper some of the more controversial policy goals.

Amulya Ganguli, a political commentator, said that Muslims in particular would be alarmed at the prospect of Modi securing a majority given his reputation as a Hindu hardliner.

“If BJP and its allies go on to win some 275 seats, it will create a great deal of uneasiness especially among the Muslims,” he said.

The BJP’s manifesto includes a number of commitments that worry Muslims, such as a longstanding demand for the building of a temple on the site of India’s most notorious religious flashpoint in Ayodhya.

Modi is still reviled by many Muslims as he was chief minister of Gujarat in 2002 when at least 1,000 people were killed in religious riots there. Most of the victims were Muslims.

Analysts had been predicting that any Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) projects that Modi might seek to project in power would likely be limited by the compulsions of coalition politics.

K G Suresh, of the Delhi-based Vivekananda think-tank, said an outright majority would indeed “give the BJP the requisite freedom to pursue and implement most of its agenda.”

However Suresh said there were signs Modi had already diluted some of the BJP’s more hardline religious policies.

If the BJP-led NDA does fall short of a majority, it is expected to try and strike a deal with West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress party which was forecast by NDTV to be the third largest party with 30 seats.

Trinamool’s firebrand leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said yesterday the idea of a Modi premiership was “fantasy.”

But in the same interview Banerjee, a former ally of Congress, indicated she was open to offers as long as West Bengal benefited.

“Bengal does not need to go with a begging bowl. We are only asking for what is due to us,” she said.

The marathon elections began on April 7 and will wrap up on May 12. Results are expected four days later.