Congress hunts for allies & a leader

The main opposition Congress party's leader -- Italian-born Sonia Gandhi -- has decided to keep herself away from the race, at least for the moment.

"We never impose our leadership on other parties," Sonia told reporters in Mumbai recently. "This question (of who will be prime minister) will be decided by the people of the country."

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Sonia, 56, was until recently being projected by her party as its prime ministerial candidate, but with voices of dissent from prospective allies the issue has been now kept in limbo.

The Congress has started an intense exercise to forge new alliances with regional parties while also patching up relations with old foes.

On the ruling side there is a structured coalition led by Vajpayee, 79, of about two dozen parties that have more or less remained together since 1999, the opposition has not been able to project a united front.

Until recently, the Congress was not even in favour of coalitions but this has now changed with the largest opposition party actively seeking allies to counter the ruling conglomerate.

The biggest problem, however, remains the question of who will be prime minister should the opposition win -- most prospective Congress allies are not willing to accept Sonia as their leader.

Their main opposition to her candidature is that she was not born in India and only assumed Indian citizenship after her marriage to assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in the early eighties.

The ruling Hindu nationalists have made Gandhi's foreign origin one of their main election issues. Sonia is also considered to be a far less experienced leader politically, having joined active politics only in 1996 at the urgings of her party, compared with Vajpayee's more than five decades of political life as an MP.