NEW DELHI: India is counting down to state polls in December with politicians keeping a hawk eye on onion prices, which became the hottest electoral issue and caused the rout of a New Delhi city government in 1998.

The city council does not enjoy the same powers as its provincial cousins but ambitious politicians feel the Indian capital’s assembly and New Delhi’s elected Town Hall are stepping stones to federal office.

“We will be vigilant as even a tiny issue can mess up our campaigning,” said a cabinet colleague of New Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, a leading light of India’s main opposition Congress party.

The comment was in reference to the last election for New Delhi’s assembly in 1998 when India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was defeated in a rout linked to a mysterious hike in the price of onions, the tangiest ingredient in Indian curry.

Prices jumped to 80 rupees a kilogramme from five rupees in the poll runup and the BJP, which then ruled Delhi, was red in the face when the police even reported onion burglaries during house break-ins.

The BJP accused the Congress of using its clout with regional growers to strangle 80 per cent of New Delhi’s daily need of 600 tons of onions and discredit its political opponents.

Dikshit’s Food Minister Haroon Yusuf appeared nervous on reports that the city’s vegetable markets had turned bullish just after India’s poll commission fixed December 1 as the date for voting to the Delhi council and three states.

“Onions will soon reach wholesale markets in the city from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh,” he said of the two Congress-ruled states that have promised to help out Dikshit in her hour of need.

“We will take stern action against traders if they start hoarding,” Yusuf said in an oblique warning to the Hindu nationalist BJP, which boasts major clout with northern India’s mainly-Hindu trading community.

The federal finance ministry warned that India’s annualized inflation rate rose for the fourth straight week ending September 20 to 4.72 per cent mainly on the back of soaring prices of vegetables, fruits and edible oils.

Dikshit appeared unshaken by the ominous spurt in vegetable prices.—AFP