The ruling Congress party on Saturday claimed a victory in the state of Maharashtra which would boost the fortunes of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi's party and strengthen Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's minority national coalition. The vote in Maharashtra, India's second most populous state, was the first major political test since Congress scored a shock victory in national elections in May last.
"We have won the election and we will form the government," Margaret Alva, a senior Congress leader, told reporters. "This is a vote for all the good work done by our state government and in favour of Sonia Gandhi's leadership."
Congress and its allies won 140 seats in the 288-member Maharashtra state assembly at the end of counting, according to preliminary results from the Election Commission.
Though that is still short of the half-way mark of 145 seats, the alliance is expected to easily form a government with the support of smaller, pro-Congress groups.
Maharashtra, also India's second most industrialised state and home to Bombay, the country's financial and film capital, is a prized province to rule.
The state of 100 million people--the size of Germany and the Netherlands put together--accounts for 12 percent of national GDP, pays two-thirds of India's corporate taxes and 37 percent of personal income taxes.
Jubilant workers of the Congress and its ally, the Nationalist Congress Party, set off fire-crackers outside the party office in the heart of Bombay's business hub and danced on the streets, beating drums and shouting victory slogans. A new state chief minister would be chosen early next week after talks between the two parties, a Congress official said.
In Occupied Kashmir, Chief Minister Mohammad Syed won a by-election to enter the lower house of the state legislature, a victory expected to boost his standing in the disputed state.
Though analysts considered that Congress had a slight edge in Maharashtra before the polls, they felt it was vulnerable to any tendency to vote against the party in power. "Despite bad governance, the Congress won mainly because the opposition election strategy was not well-planned," said Bharat Kumar Raut, editor of the Maharashtra Times newspaper.
"The BJP and (its ally) Shiv Sena are largely urban parties and they had no answers to the Congress strategy in the villages," he told Reuters. Raut and Congress workers also said that Sonia Gandhi's refusing the post of prime minister in May and handing it over to Singh had created an emotional appeal among voters, particularly Maharashtra's women.
"The Maharashtra verdict consolidates the government at the Centre. It's a green signal to the Manmohan Singh government to move steadfastly and decisively without looking at the left or the right," political analyst Bhaskar Rao of New Delhi's Centre for Media Studies told Reuters.
"It is also a message for the Congress to consolidate its position in states like Bihar which are expected to go to the polls soon," Rao said.
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