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4 men in scramble for wooing 514 million Indian voters
NEW DELHI. May 19: Three men say they are confident of being able to form the next government of the world's most populous democracy after Indian elections that start Monday, reports Reuter
A fourth, sure that no party will win a majority. sees himself as the likely kingmaker or even a compromise prime minister
The four men wooing India's 514 million voters in the May 20. 23 and 26 election are: Rajiv Gandhi the reluctant politician who led the Congress party to Its sec ond defeat since India won Independence from Britain In 1947. Grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru. India's first Prime Minister, the airline pilot entered politics on the death of his younger brother Sanjay In 1980 under pressure from his mother. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Nehru's daughter
He succeeded her hours after she was assassinated In October 1984. Promising to lead India Into the 21st century. he won a landslide victory in elections that December.
He later became mired in charges of corruption and Inefficiency and Congress lost Its majority in November 1989 In opposition. It helped bring down one minority govern ment a year later and backed another, under Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar
Gandhi confessed he was taken by surprise when Shekhar quit tn March to force the election. Powerful regional Congress bosses will threaten Gandhi's leadership If he fails at the polls.
Gandhi. 46. has sought to shrug off both the pro-rich Image that helped defeat him in 1989 and the sluggish Image he acquired In opposition. His Italian wife Sonia has tried hard to identify with Indian culture.
Campaigning strenuously by road and rail through the searing summer heat of India's po-Ittically-domtnant northern plains. Gandhi has been mobbed by tens of thousands of villagers
But the men may just have wanted to see Nehru's grandson while women have always turned out for the man whose fair-skinned good looks once made him the nation's heart-throb.
Congress remained the biggest party In the old Parliament and Gandhi's opponents hope the crowds will not translate Into votes.
Lal Krishan Advani : likely Prime ministerial candidate of the right-wing. Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which has surged late In the campaign. Few outside Its ranks see It winning a majority. but not for want of skilful efforts by Advani to project It as India's party of salvation.
Advani a clean-living. 63-year-old. is a lawyer who puts BJP policy across persuasively to the outside world and to moderate urban voters. He can also strike up an instant rapport with crowds of Hindispeaking villagers.
He is the driving force behind a BJP campaign that critics say aims at creating a militant Hindu state. He says the BJP just wants to stop Its opponents pampering the 120 million Muslims among India's 850 million people with special legal provisions.
Advani is credited with the strategies that boosted his party’s strength from Just two seats to 86 in the 1989 polls.
Now he hopes the BJP will ride to victory on a wave of Hindu emotion over the site of a 16 th century mosque tn the northern town of Ayodhya Advani courted arrest last year by marching to claim the site, which he says ts the birthplace of the Hindu god Lord Rama. His protest helped bring down the government of Vishwanath Pratap Singh.
Vishwanath Pratap Singh: Creator of an anti-Congress alliance that took power as a minority government with outside support form the BJP and Communists in December 1989.
Singh had quit Congress after launching an anti-corruption drive as Gandhi's Finance Minister. Hailed by Indian media as 'Mr Clean'. Singh lasted Just 11 months as Prime Minister, a Job he had always insisted he did not want
In August 1990 he suddenly decided to implement a 10 year-old plan to raise the pro portion of government Jobs reserved for low castes tn the Hindu hierarchy to nearly 50 per cent.
Newspapers blamed Singh when upper-caste students set fire to themselves in protest. Urban sophisticates, who had generated much of the atmosphere that brought him to power, deserted him. The MP took up the Ayodhya issue and brought down his government amid caste and Hindu-Muslim riots in November 1990.
Singh is a bespectacled 50-year-old who often seems to lose the ends of his sentences in philosophical doubt He says he sacrificed office to defend social justice. He hopes the low caste majority will carry him back to power.