Chennai, May 15
Though all elections are crucial for a political party and its leader, the 15th Lok Sabha polls are rather special for the 61-year-old Iron Lady of Tamil Nadu, AIADMK chief J. Jayalalithaa.

Not only does her party need to make its presence felt in the Lok Sabha in these days of coalition party rule but also at the seat of power in the state, currently occupied by rival DMK.

If her party wins a good number of seats, there is an opportunity for a regional party leader to play a key role. Jayalalithaa with her impeccable English, decision-making ability and clear understanding of issues could emerge as a contender for the prime minister’s post.

In the 2004 general election, AIADMK was routed by the DMK-led combine (Congress, Left parties, PMK, MDMK) that swept all the 39 seats in Tamil Nadu and the lone Puducherry seat.

Riding on the successful alliance, the DMK front won the Assembly elections in 2006. However, in the general election, the DMK-led coalition is unlikely to sail as smoothly as it did in the last two elections.

Barring the Congress, most other alliance partners have moved over to Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK camp. The DMK government --- with 96 legislators --- needs the support of the Congress, which has 34 members in the Assembly.

If the AIADMK-led coalition wins a sizeable number of seats and the Congress succeeds in grabbing its support at the Centre, then one of the bargains will be the withdrawal of Congress support to the DMK government.

“The Congress will happily do that as it was not treated fairly by the DMK,” political analyst Cho Ramaswamy told IANS, referring to the denial of ministerial berths to Congress MLAs.

“If the Congress is short of the requisite numbers and the BJP has it, Jayalalithaa will extend her support to the latter. On several issues, she and the BJP share similar views. If one goes by public perception, the AIADMK combine should win a good number of MPs this time.”

Whether it is the Congress or the BJP combine that the AIADMK front supports, what is sure is that Jayalalithaa would pressurise the new government to institute probes into the deals okayed by DMK ministers. — IANS

New Delhi/Lucknow, May 15
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and UP Chief Minister Mayawati may tilt towards the Congress-led UPA and seek ministerial berths for her close aides, reliable sources said.

Twentyfour hours ahead of the outcome of one of the most unpredictable elections in India, discussions are on among the close associates of the maverick leader about the party’s position in different scenarios.

"She is clear. If she is unable to become the Prime Minister, she will prefer to cling to her base, Uttar Pradesh, and want a ministerial berth for Satish Mishra (her trusted lieutenant and party general secretary)," a BSP strategist said.

"That is if we decide to join the government," he added, pleading anonymity since no one except Mayawati is authorised to talk to the media in the party.

The BSP leader explained that Mayawati would prefer "not to support a BJP-led government lest she antagonises Muslim voters", who, she believes, are breaking away from the Samajwadi Party and inching towards the BSP.

"We would rather back the Congress," he said, adding:"Whether we join the government or not will depend on the numbers. If we don't cross 25 to 30 seats, our strategy will be to lend external support to the government."

The BSP leader said this was the broad thinking and "everything will depend on what emerges on May 16 (the day of counting)".

At the moment, Mayawati is in touch with the Left parties leading the so-called Third Front and will finalise the strategy after seeing their performance.

Political analysts say Mayawati will not be able to repeat her sterling performance of the 2007 elections when she stunned everyone by netting 203 of the 403 seats in the Assembly to form a government in the country's most populous state.

Ever since that victory, Mayawati had publicly declared her prime ministerial ambitions.

While Bahujan Samaj Party leaders have been saying that their party will get a record 50 out of the total of 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state, few buy this. The party got 19 seats in the 2004 elections.

"She will not get more than 25 seats (the BSP won 19 seats in 2004), essentially because the circumstances in 2007 and now are quite different," said Lucknow-based analyst Ramesh Dixit.

Sudha Pai, a political scientist at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, concurred.

"She might at the most go up to 30," said the expert on UP politics.

"The Brahmin-Dalit combination of 2007 will not work because reports indicate that the Congress and the BJP both are doing well and high-caste votes may have gone to the BJP.

"Secondly, there was the anti-incumbency factor against the Samajwadi Party government then because of the poor law and order situation; now there is anti-incumbency against her," Pai explained.

Mayawati's biographer, Ajoy Bose, told IANS that even if she got 30 seats, "she will be a significant player in government formation".

He said the scenario was "quite confusing but one should not discount the fact that many contests in UP this time became three to multi-cornered".

"The contests got very close. So, it should not be a surprise if Mayawati gets even 40 seats," he argued.

Bose agreed that if Mayawati was unable to become the Prime Minister, she would not seek any berth for herself at the Centre."It is important for her to secure her base rather than taking a ministry. She is either the Prime Minister of India or the Chief Minister of UP." — IANS

Hyderabad, May 15
Once a poster boy of India’s economic reforms, Nara Chandrababu Naidu is today a changed man as he gears up to play a key role in government formation in New Delhi and Andhra Pradesh.

From his stand of “no free lunches” during his nine-year rule (1995-2004) to the electoral promise of monthly cash doles of Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 for the poor, the transformation of the Telugu Desam party (TDP) president has been remarkable.

A diehard reformer and strong opponent of populism five years ago, Naidu has now joined the bandwagon of political populism, making promises of free colour televisions and money to poor and middle-class families.

Learning from his party’s crushing defeat in the last elections, Naidu admitted he had committed a mistake by remaining too focused on economic reforms, while not addressing the immediate needs of the poor, especially farmers.

While his critics see him as desperate, Naidu defends himself by arguing that the time has come to distribute the fruits of economic reforms among people.

The stakes are high for the 60-year-old leader as he not only took a U-turn on economic reforms and the Telangana issue but also joined hands with the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and the two Left parties to take on the Congress party.

While he succeeded in cobbling up an alliance with the parties that were allies of the Congress in 2004, he faces a tough challenge in keeping them, especially maverick TRS leader K Chandrasekhara Rao, with him.

Naidu, a shrewd politician, loves to play kingmaker at the Centre. Ever since he toppled his father-in-law and TDP founder NT Rama Rao in 1995, Naidu has hogged the limelight in the national political arena.

The architect of the United Front government after the 1996 polls, Naidu is known to keep his cards close to his chest. He surprised everyone by joining hands with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1998 and continued to play kingmaker till 2004.

The defeat in 2004 not only threw him out of power in the state but also put an end to his dominance in national politics as the TDP could win only five out of 42 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

The longest serving CM in the state’s history then snapped ties with the BJP to once again come closer to the Left and his other erstwhile allies in the United Front. During the last two years, he again became active in national politics, bringing non-Congress and non-BJP parties together to form the Third Front.

The tech-savvy Naidu, who is credited for the emergence of Hyderabad on the world IT map, considers Congress his number one enemy and may agree to go with any formation to prevent it from forming the government. — IANS

Mumbai, May 15
Public denials notwithstanding, Maharashtra strongman and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar may be nurturing the ambition to become the Prime Minister.

The stakes are high for the 69-year-old veteran politician.

In 1991, Sharad Pawar's name was discussed as a contender for the top post after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. But the Congress preferred to back PV Narasimha Rao, who made Pawar the Defence Minister.

Pawar continued hobnobbing with national and state politics on various occasions, going back to Maharashtra as the Chief Minister in 1993, and unsuccessfully contesting the Congress president's post against the late Sitaram Kesri in 1997.

A couple of years later, in 1999, when Maharashtra was on the verge of ending saffron rule of the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (SS-BJP), Pawar suddenly parted ways with the Congress.

Taking the oft-repeated line of Congress president Sonia Gandhi's foreign origin, he and others formed the NCP.

The NCP aligned with the Congress later and trounced the SS-BJP in the 2004 Assembly elections.The NCP also made its presence felt at the national level.

After building the party into a formidable force in Maharashtra, moving shoulder to shoulder with the Congress, Pawar may be feeling sure-footed enough to dabble in the possibility of being the Prime Minister.

While political circles rule out the possibility solely on the strength of the NCP, a lot will depend on post-result permutations and combinations.

Union Minister Praful Patel said today that the Congress was the largest grouping within the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), and "the Prime Minister would be theirs".But so far, Sharad Pawar has managed to keep everybody guessing about his next move, his next purported ally or probable foe, his suspected “secret” deals with other parties even at the cost of the Congress or other UPA constituents. — IANS