THE fate of the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Narasimha Rao, and his Congress party hung in the balance after the third and final round of voting in the general election yesterday, with indications that no party will win an overall majority.
Counting of votes begins today, and the results, except for six seats in the northern state of Kashmir, where voters go to the polls later this month, will be known by Friday.
Senior Congress leaders have challenged Mr Rao's leadership of the party which has ruled India for most of its 49 years since independence. Potential coalition partners have indicated a willingness to form alliances with various factions of it, but without Mr Rao as party leader. Mr Rao, however, confident of his manipulating skills, remains optimistic.
He ruled out the possibility of any power struggle within the party after the elections, maintaining that it would form the government with a clear majority. "I do not see the possibility of any succession struggle as there is no conflict over leadership," he said yesterday.
But his confidence is ill founded, and even Mr Rao's supporters concede their party has ceased to be the "political umbrella" synthesising diverse interests.
"Its centralised decision making process is out of tune with the ground level support it once commanded," said one senior MP and Rao loyalist.
Besides, the charisma of the Nehru Gandhi family which dominated the Congress party for over 40 years, holding it together in power, has disappeared under Mr Rao.
Riven by internecine fighting it has lost out to the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP, and the centrist Janata, Dal Left Front in the northern "cow belt" states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan, and to an extent Madhya Pradesh.
It has also been forced out of its strongholds in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra and Gujarat in the west.
And, although the BJP has, managed to occupy some of the space vacated by the Congress and is making a bid to form the government with its slogan of Hindutva or Hindu hegemony, it is handicapped by its limited reach.
It is virtually non existent in most of the southern and eastern states and will have to expand its reach to become a national party capable of forming the federal government.
The political muscle of the Janata Dal Left Front, on the other hand, is limited to around four states but, given the electoral uncertainty, it will be the main player in determining the configuration of India's new government.
