01 May 2004	Saturday	10 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

NEW DELHI, April 30: Political uncertainty spurred by predictions of a hung parliament after India's ongoing general elections have shaken markets and prompted key players on Friday to jostle and speculate over the country's top job.

Most opinion polls, including exit polls conducted in the second leg of India's four-phase elections on Monday, indicated difficulties for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's National Democratic Alliance in getting a majority in the 545-seat Lok Sabha.

Mr Vajpayee is himself a candidate from Lucknow, which goes to polls on Wednesday. Elections finish on May 10 and the results are due on May 13. Lucknow is among 83 seats in Wednesday's contest, including 30 all important constituencies from the crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.

New reports say the Bharatiya Janata Party has been so rattled by the exit polls that it has decided to go for a 'carpet bombing' of sorts in the next round of intense campaigning. It now proposes to draw on the support of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a rightwing Hindu rabble-rouser accused of organizing anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002.

Mr Modi was being avoided by the BJP so far because Mr Vajpayee had pitched for the crucial Muslim support in Uttar Pradesh. He has apparently found them uninterested. The Hindu revivalist Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the BJP's ideological fountainhead, has stepped up its involvement in the elections after initially keeping aloof. An RSS spokesman said the BJP would hold on to its seats from the 1999 polls, if not increase them.

"We are confident that Mr Vajpayee will form the next government. And if it is not Mr Vajpayee then it will be no one else," Mr Ram Madhav told a TV channel. It was not clear if his remarks meant that any opposition minority government, possibly headed by the Congress party, would be unacceptable to the NDA.