NEW DELHI, India, March 23, (Reuter): Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi faced the toughest popularity test of his 27 months in office today when more than 54 million Indians voted amid tight security for State Assemblies in three key States.
Thousands of police and paramilitary forces were deployed to prevent violence during the daylong polling in West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, and Kerala States.
Counting will begin tomorrow and full results are expected by Wednesday.
Political commentators have billed the polls where 3,239 can. didates are contesting 505 State Assembly seats as a major political test for Gandhi and his Congress (I) party.
He has campaigned hard for Congress to hold on to power with its coalition partners in the Southern State of Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir, India’s northernmost State.
In Kerala, the only State Congress still controls in South India, Gandhi’s party faces a challenge from a marxistled coalition.
In Jammu and Kashmir his coalition with the Moslem National Conference of Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah is expected to emerge victorious.
In the northwest, however, newspaper opinion polls indicate that Gandhi will fail to wrest control of West Bengal from the Marxist led coalition of Chief Minister Jyoti Basu which has ruled for 10 years.
By-elections for three National Parliament seats and eight State Assembly seats were also held in five other states.
Police and national news agencies said polling was generally peaceful but reported clashes between rival party supporters in some areas.
One person was stabbed in Srinagar, capital of Kashmir India’s only Moslem majority State in fighting between Moslem fundamentalists and Congress supporters, the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency said.
It said police arrested 30 people and foiled four attempts at “booth capturing” the taking over of a polling station by one party to prevent rivals from voting.
PTI reported clashes at polling booths in Calcutta, capital of West Bengal, between Congress members and supporters of the ruling Communist Party.
Turnout was low in the State’s hilly Darjeeling district where Gurkha militants called for a boycott of the poll, PTI said. The militants have waged a yearlong campaign to carve a separate state out of West Bengal for the district’s majority Nepal speaking Gurkhas. Gandhi, whose honeymoon with the electorate of the World’s largest democracy began to wane last year, threw himself into a hectic month long campaign touring all three States in a bid to bolster Congress. Congress is in power in 15 of the country’s 24 States, mainly in the Hindu heartland of Central and Northern India. Political commentators view the elections as crucial for Gandhi whose failure to solve Sikh problem in Punjab State and ease communal and regional tensions in other States has tarnished his image.
A good showing by Congress would muffle criticism whereas defeat in Kerala or Kashmir would give ammunition to the* 42yearold leader’s enemies inside and outside the party, they said.
Gandhi’s handling of India’s unwieldy political and economic problems prompted the country’s leading news magazine India Today to run a cover in January entitled “Rajiv’s Mess’.
A revolt from Congress old guard politicians loyal to his mother Indira Gandhi, a political row with President Zail Singh, clashes between Hindus and Moslems, Sikh freedom fighters in Punjab and growing regionalism in the South and northeast is just some of Gandhi’s headaches.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 27, 1987
