8:12 AM
GUWAHATI: Tens of thousands of Indians in the insurgency-racked state of Assam queued up on Monday to cast their votes in a local election, the first big test of the ruling Congress party since it became embroiled in corruption scandals last year.
Five states, which send just over a fifth of lawmakers in the 545-member lower house of parliament, are holding local elections that run until mid-May, and the battered Congress must perform well to retain its authority in the federal coalition.
The election in Assam, held in the shadow of the threat of attacks by rebels fighting New Delhi’s rule, pits the state’s Congress government against a local party allied to the federal main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress-led coalition has been hit by a series of corruption scandals and by high food prices, which have damaged its credibility and spooked investors in Asia’s third-largest economy.
The scandals include charges of massive corruption and rule-breaking during the grant of lucrative mobile phone licences and radio spectrum in 2007-08 lost the exchequer $39 billion in revenue.
The ruling Congress is favoured to win the election in Assam, taking advantage of a fractured opposition, but the scandals will weigh. Analysts predict a slimmer majority for the party.
“This time it will not be a smooth sailing for the Congress,” said Haider Hussain, a political analyst based in Guwahati, Assam’s main city.
More than 45,000 security forces guarded 11,000 polling booths across 62 of the 126 constituencies in the tea-and-oil rich state. The rest of the state will go to polls on April 11.
Assam faces a decades-old violent separatist movement. Some rebels are in peace talks with the government, but a faction opposes this and has ambushed security forces and attacked Congress leaders in the run up to the elections.
Other states that have elections are the communist ruled states of West Bengal and Kerala, where Congress coalitions are expected to win on an anti-incumbency wave. Congress is also expected to retain the tiny southern state of Pondicherry.
In the southern state of Tamil Nadu, corruption charges will weigh on the Congress coalition’s bid to retain power despite populist measures such as free television sets and cheap grains for the poor.
Andimuthu Raja, the former telecoms minister in the centre of the telecoms case, is a member of Congress’ local ally DMK, which has also been implicated in the scandal.
The results of all five elections are due May 13.
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