New Delhi, February 27
The Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Tuesday stormed to power in Punjab, while the BJP scored a morale-boosting win in Uttarakhand in the Assembly polls, dealing major blows to an already besieged Congress ahead of the politically decisive Uttar Pradesh ballot.

Tens of thousands of jubilant Akali Dal and BJP supporters celebrated the twin victories all over Punjab and Uttarakhand as the Congress struggled to remain ahead of the pack in Manipur, where voters seemed intent on throwing up another hung Assembly.

A jubilant Parkash Singh Badal, 80, was set to become the Chief Minister of Punjab for the fourth time at the head of an Akali Dal-BJP coalition, having led a bitter battle for electoral power against a determined Congress.

Another bad news for the Congress was the easy victory of BJP's Navjot Singh Sidhu in the by-election from the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat that got vacant after he quit following his conviction in a road rage case. Sidhu won by over 100,000 votes, defeating Punjab Finance Minister Surinder Singla.

In Uttarakhand, former central minister and BJP veteran B.C. Khanduri seemed most likely to head a BJP government although the party has not made known its preference.

Both outgoing Chief Ministers, Amarinder Singh of Punjab and Narayan Dutt Tiwari of Uttarakhand, accepted defeat. The former said the Congress would play the role of an "effective opposition" and keep the new Punjab government on its toes. However, he admitted: "I am very disappointed."

The outcome of the Punjab and Uttarakhand ballot was immediately felt in New Delhi, where the Congress-led coalition government came under intense attack in Parliament for a second day over its failure to net Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, arrested in Argentina and bailed out for his links to the Bofors arms purchase scandal of 1986.

Predictably, the Opposition hit out at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but the latter denied the state results would affect him.

"There is no question of a referendum. I am not denying that there will be some fallout, but there is no reflection on the functioning of the central government," he told reporters outside Parliament. "State elections are fought on local issues." The Opposition disagreed.

"It is a clearly setback for the Congress and the Prime Minister's economic policies," a beaming BJP president Rajnath Singh told reporters, after bedlam forced the adjournment of both the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.

Arun Jaitley of the BJP, enveloped in a string of problems since its shock defeat in the 2004 parliamentary elections, said: "We are in the process of putting our house in order." Also exultant was the Samajwadi Party, which has withdrawn its support to the Manmohan Singh government and faces an acid electoral test in Uttar Pradesh next month. "Since Manmohan Singh became the Prime Minister, the Congress has not won a single election," said party MP Mohan Singh.

Although the Congress insisted that defeats in Punjab and Uttarakhand were no reflection on the national government, party spokesperson Jayanti Natarajan said: "We will try to understand why we lost and draw lessons." The Akali-BJP win in Punjab was as sweeping as was its rout five years earlier. The two parties bagged 68 of the 117 Assembly seats, leaving the Congress gasping with just 43, almost half of what it had hoped to capture.

Far from the neck-and-neck finish predicted by some, it turned out to be a one-sided affair.

Although most senior Congress leaders managed to win in the state, the BJP, which won only three seats in the last Assembly election, made rapid gains throughout the urban belt.

In Uttarakhand, the BJP, after some initial shock as the counting of votes started at 8 a.m., breached the magic figure of 35 in the 70-member legislature. The Congress got just 17 seats while the Uttarakhand Kranti Dal (UKD), which had expected to do well, suffered badly.

Most Congress ministers in Uttarakhand were mauled—a reflection on the governance veteran Narayan Dutt Tiwari provided during the last five years.

While Khanduri is the frontrunner for the Chief Minister's post in Uttarakhand, the party's state president Bhagat Singh Koshiyari, who was the first Chief Minister of the state, indicated that he too was in the race for the top post.

Although vote count is still on, it was clear Manipur was in for yet another hung house in which the Congress would head the pack but would be far short of seats needed to form a government without help. Smaller groups and independent candidates, including the Rashtriya Janata Dal, won several seats. —IANS