"ELECCIONES CELEBRADAS EN LA INDIA". "EL PARTIDO GANADOR, HA SIDO EL DE SONIA GANDHI".
"With the opposition, Bharatiya Janata Party conceding defeat by early afternoon, Congress’s strong performance signals the possibility of a stable, and strong government in the face of stiff challenges: a sharp slowdown in economic growth, abiding poverty and instability in the region, including in Pakistan".
"By early evening the "Election Commission of India" projected the Congress-led alliance to be leading in 259 of 543 parliamentary seats, with 160 for the opposition B.J.P.-led alliance and 63 for a third alliance, which is dominated by the Communists. Final results were due later".
"We have got the numbers now to form a stable government", Prithviraj Chavan, a Congress minister, declared on television. A smaller vote share would have led to protracted and difficult political horse-trading to form alliances and engendered a potentially weak and ineffectual government — a prospect that had worried political observers at home and analysts and investors abroad".
"The incumbent prime minister, "Manmohan Singh", was expected to continue in office. Not since the country’s founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, has an incumbent prime minister finished a full five-year, term in office and been returned to power".
"Congress’s appeals to the rural poor paid off; the outreach included a large public jobs program in the countryside, higher government payments for staple grains and a costly loan waiver program for indebted farmers".
"A host of regional and caste-based parties, whose leaders had openly declared their ambitions to govern India, trailed. And in the huge, politically influential state of Uttar Pradesh, with a population equivalent to that of Brazil, Congress posted its best performance in more than 20 years".
"Congress leaders showered praise for the party’s strong showing on Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and the inevitable party leader; he and his sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, known for her quick political wit, campaigned heavily in parts of Uttar Pradesh. The apparent margin of victory nationwide surprised even party officials".
"It exceeded our wildest expectations,” Jairam Ramesh, a key party strategist, said in an interview in the party headquarters, as workers beat drums and set off firecrackers in the sizzling midday heat".
"Shortly thereafter, at a somber and largely empty B.J.P. office, Arun Jaitley, a party leader, accepted defeat. “Something certainly did go wrong,” he told reporters. “We will analyze the reasons".
"Congress will still need a few outside partners to seize a majority of Parliament, and none among its leaders were ready to announce their choice of allies. Last time, the Congress-led coalition, known as the United Progressive Alliance, relied on several Communist parties to stay in power, and the government was frequently bogged down by the competing demands of its partners, putting on hold a slate of reforms, from fixing the bureaucracy to privatizing more state-owned companies. The Communists withdrew their support over the contentious nuclear deal with the United States last October".
"This time, the Communists seem to have got a drubbing in their longtime stronghold state, West Bengal, paradoxically, over the way its investor-friendly leaders tried to forcibly acquire farmland for industry".
"For Congress, this stands to bring sweet relief. “The left will not have a stranglehold,” Mr. Ramesh said. “There will be better cohesion on economic policy. Right now, the priority is to restore high economic growth".
The B.J.P.’s appeals to national security did not yield political dividends. Its bête noire, Feroze Varun Gandhi, who had been jailed for making hate speeches, was projected to win. A great-grandson of India’s founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, he has been estranged from the Nehru-Gandhi political family for most of his life.
"The election, results defied several commonplace assumptions. Some professional commentators had rued the absence of big ideas and ideology in these elections, yet Indians went to the polls in droves in the scorching heat: At nearly 60 percent, election turnout was higher than in 2004".
"There were widespread fears that small, regional parties would upstage the national parties — or demand influential government portfolios in exchange for their support. But they remained small and regional".
"For Rahul Gandhi, these elections were a crucial test of credibility. Mr. Gandhi became his party’s star campaigner, averaging four campaign rallies a day for more than a month. His mother, the party chairperson, Sonia Gandhi, had renounced the prime minister’s post last time, when the Congress clinched a surprise victory".
"This time, too, she faces an act of renunciation: whether to stick with Mr. Singh, whom she has repeatedly described as the party’s choice for the post, or rewarding her son".
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