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Indian election ends, scramble for power begins

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-14 16:57

NEW DELHI -- India's legion of political parties began positioning themselves to form new alliances Thursday, a day after the last polls closed, marking an end to India's monthlong election.

Exit polls indicate that no party won anything close to a majority in Parliament, which means an unwieldy coalition of parties will almost certainly form the next government. The results will be announced Saturday.

Voters line up to cast their ballots outside a polling station in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh May 13, 2009. [Agencies]

Politicians are expected to be busy during the next several days negotiating alliances, making new friends and betraying old ones in exchange for plum ministries and other totems of power.

"New friendships, new groupings and new polarizations will emerge after May 16," said Chandrababu Naidu, president of a south Indian party that hopes to come to power in the state of Andhra Pradesh. "Do not get carried away by surveys or rumors that are being spread by political parties," he told supporters, according to the Times of India.

Naidu said he would travel to New Delhi to negotiate alliances once results are announced.

Local media speculated feverishly on the coalition calculus and reported a flurry of late-night meetings between various party leaders. The NDTV television news called its coverage "The Alliance Bazaar."

The long, grueling campaign season produced few central issues that resonated across this wildly diverse nation of 1.2 billion people and 714 million eligible voters. Total voter turnout was approximately 59 to 60 percent, the national election commission said, up slightly from 58 percent in the last national vote in 2004.

India has been ruled by coalition governments for most of the last two decades, including the current coalition, led by the Congress party, which served a full five-year term.

Media reports said the coalition led by the ruling Congress party held a slim lead over the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies. Congress has long been dominated by the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty.

But exit polls in India are notoriously unreliable -- nearly every poll was completely wrong in the last election -- and experts cautioned that any predictions would be premature.

"We can only be certain about the uncertainty of it," said Amitabh Mattoo, a political analyst. "You will naturally have a coalition," he said. But the final form of that coalition was impossible to predict.