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India's ruling party

tottering ahead

of polls, may break up

NEW DELHI: India's ruling Congress (I) party, the country's oldest, is tottering with general elections only two weeks away, and analysts say it could disintegrate in the event of a poll debacle.

More than 110 years after it was founded, the Congress is widely seen as heading towards its worst electoral showing since 1947, when the country became independent.

Several long-standing leaders have deserted the party like a sinking ship or have been expelled after rebelling against Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, the Congress president.

Across India, many of the party's traditional supporters have turned their backs on it.

Although party managers talk confidently of winning the parliamentary election to be held in late April and May, there is widespread disenchantment among grassroots party activist.

Naturally, the opposition is gloating. "The Congress house is on fire," said Makhan Lal Fotedar, a former federal minister who quit the ruling party in May last year. "It will consume everyone, including Rao.

"The Congress will be wiped out in this election," he said.

"The Congress has ruled the country almost uninterrupted since 1947 barring two brief spells when two opposition groupings took power, only to cave in under internal squabbling.

For decades, the Congress, by virtue of its nationwide appeal, looked to be the only party capable of governing the world's largest democracy.

Not any more. Congress spokesman Vithal Gadgil admitted that the party's traditional supporters - the mass of Hindu "untouchables" or Dalits, Muslims and the Hindu upper castes - were moving away from the party.

"There is alienation," Gadgil said in an interview. "It is more or less true for the whole country."

The Congress today rules only seven major states out of the total of 25 in the country, and has heavily lost state legislative elections over the past two years despite hectic campaigning by Rao.

It has virtually ceased to exist in the two most populous states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together fill a fourth of the 545 seats in parliament.-AFP