NEW DELHI: It was once called the grand old party of Indian politics that fought for the country's freedom from colonial rule. But as the world's largest democracy heads for a general election, many say the only thing grand about the Congress party today is its decline.

"From a two-thirds majority all through the Jawahar-lal Nehru and Indira Gandhi periods and four-fifths during Rajiv Gandhi's time, they haven't come into power on their own in recent years," said political analyst Inder Malhotra.

The numbers are telling. The venerable party that once dominated India's political landscape won just 114 seats in the 545-member lower house in the 1999 election and it heads a government in just a handful of the country's 29 states.

If the present seems imperfect for the Congress, its future looks bleak. Some opinion polls have forecast the party will slip to 103 seats in this poll while the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads the ruling coalition, will grab 195 seats in the lower house.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has called the elections in April and May, nearly six months early, to capitalize on an economic boom, strong gains in state elections last December and a nascent peace process with Pakistan.

"The Congress' future is bleak if they come down to less than 114 seats and are out of power for the next five years, especially since they have already been out for so many years, said Malhotra. "There is little scope of a grand Congress revival."

That's a long way for the Congress, which began its political journey in 1885 as essentially a party of upper-crust lawyers determined to overthrow the country's British colonial rulers. Over the years, it grew into a political behemoth that galvanized millions under Mahatma Gandhi and his non-violent struggle to lead India to independence in 1947.

Often compared to a spreading banyan tree because it offered shelter to all, Congress was in power most of the first 50 years after independence when it grew to embrace a broad spectrum of ideological, caste and regional groups.

India's oldest party suffered its first big blow in 1977 when it was thrown out of power after Indira Gandhi clamped emergency rule, but the Congress bounced back on a wave of sympathy after her assassination in 1984. -Reuters