09 May 2004	Sunday	18 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1425

NEW DELHI: Indian political leaders hit the campaign trail on the weekend to make fervent last-ditch appeals for support ahead of the final and biggest round on Monday of the country's marathon general elections.

The politicians criss-crossed 12 states and four territories on Saturday, which marked the close of campaigning to woo 215 million voters in a race that looked to be tighter than pre-election opinion polls had forecast.

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was hitting the hustings in the northern state of Punjab state while opposition Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi was seeking support in the Indian capital New Delhi.

Vajpayee's deputy and senior leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Lal Krishna Advani, was wooing votes for the ruling coalition in Kerala state in the south.

"The alternative to Mr Vajpayee is chaos and national degradation," Mr Advani said as he appealed to voters to give the BJP a clear mandate.

Domestic financial markets have been on a knife edge over the outcome of the vote, fearful the elections will produce an unstable parliament that could scupper India's aggressive economic reform drive and strong economic growth.

Sonia's Gandhi's son, Rahul, a fifth-generation politician from India's prominent Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, was in pivotal northern Uttar Pradesh state at the weekend to shore up Congress support.

A win in Uttar Pradesh - which sends 80 MPs to the 543 elected seat parliament - is crucial for any party or grouping harbouring hopes of forming the next government.

Monday's last voting round in the five-phased poll that began on April 20 is key for both Congress and the BJP as 182 seats will be contested - more than on any other voting day. Results will be known next Thursday.

Analysts say exit polls from the first four rounds suggest the BJP-led coalition will need to win half the seats in the final phase to cross the magic 272 mark for a majority.

Analysts and opinion polls say neither the BJP nor Congress have built up the steam to win on their own in the vital states of West Bengal or Tamil Nadu - accounting for 81 of the 182 constituencies voting Monday. Both will depend heavily on regional partners to secure the needed numbers.

Exit polls after the fourth round of voting on May 5 forecast the BJP-led alliance would get 245-282 seats while Congress and its allies would garner 160-205 seats.

Another projection published Saturday in The Indian Express newspaper based on exit polls and an opinion poll said the BJP-led alliance would get 240-260 seats. The Congress and its partners would get 190-210 seats, faring better than predicted by pre-poll surveys.

With the looming spectre of a hung parliament, Mr Advani appealed to voters to give the party a clear mandate. "The choice before the people is either the (BJP-led National Democratic Alliance) NDA or a motley crowd," he said.

A rattled BJP-led alliance, which began its campaign touting India's booming economy, changed its strategy midstream to focus on Congress chief Gandhi's Italian origins, which they said barred her from becoming prime minister.

Ms Gandhi, 57, is the Italian-born wife of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and took over the Congress reins in 1998.

With exit polls predicting significant gains for Congress and its allies, the BJP-led grouping seemed to have changed its strategy again.

"A new India cannot be built with a fractured mandate, a hung parliament. I want you to give us a strong and decisive mandate," an appeal signed by Mr Vajpayee in national dailies said on Saturday.

The appeal listed the government's achievements - improved infrastructure, economic growth of eight per cent, surplus foodgrains and peace moves with rival Pakistan - saying these were by-products of a stable government.

"A return to instability can prove very costly for our country," Mr Vajpayee's appeal warned voters while promising to build "an India we can all be proud of ....marching ahead to become a developed nation and a great global power."-AFP