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BJP will replace

Rao's government

NEW DELHI: India's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), buoyed by opinion polls, declared on Wednesday it was poised to form a government for the first time.

The latest poll showed the opposition BJP winning between 190 and 215 seats in the 545-seat lower house of parliament in elections starting on Saturday, but that did not account for regional allies, BJP chief Lal Krishna Advani told a news conference.

On the last day of campaigning in constituences that vote on Saturday -- 48 hours ahead of the start of polling -- Advani was brimming with confidence.

"As we draw closer to the the day of voting, there is a swing in favour of the front-running BJP," he said.

He said the BJP hoped what it saw as a swing would turn into a wave of support. The latest poll showed some 20 percent of the 590 million eligible voters have yet to make up their minds.

"We are confident that by the time we reach May 7 (the third phase of voting), BJP will be able to cross the hump and secure a majority by itself," Advani said.

Playing down its image of an elitist upper caste party, Advani said the BJP now had the overwhelming support of low-caste Dalits, indigenous tribespeople and India's 120 million Moslems, who voted largely for the ruling Congress party in the past.

Advani said that the surge in popularity was on account of its Hindu cultural nationalist platform and the scandal-haunted rule of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's Congress party.

Opinion polls so far have predicted a hung parliament, but the latest had the BJP replacing Congress as front-runner, prompting Rao to abandon his campaigning base of continuity, stability and economic reforms to savage the BJP.

He has accused the BJP of fanning Hindu-Moslem tensions and said a non-Congress government could signal civil strife similar to that in the former Yugoslavia.

Congress has also charged the BJP of using religious issues to garner votes in defiance of election rules, an accusation the BJP denies.

The BJP wants to build a temple where Hindus razed a 16th century mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya in 1992. Many Hindus believe it to be the birthplace of god-king Rama.

The demolition sparked Hindu-Moslem riots in which more than 3,000 people were killed, most of them Moslems.

The BJP, which soared from two parliamentary seats in 1984 to 117 in 1991 on the back of the temple campaign, says building one is an issue of national honour. Congress says it is a religious appeal for votes.

Advani said the latest opinion poll did not include 50 seats the BJP had given away to three allies. The BJP might also win the support of other regional groups, said another party leader.

"We could become the nucleus for regional groups," BJP vice-president K.R.Malkani told Reuters.

Voting is spread over six days between April 27 and May 30, but vote counting starts on May 8 and a clear picture is expected to emerge in about two days.-Reuter