NEW DELHI, May 10: India's main opposition Congress Party was tipped to play a key role in the formation of the new government after parliamentary polls ended on Monday and a party spokesman said ties with Pakistan would improve on the basis of transparent diplomacy.
"We will have a firmer policy on Kashmir but with a lot more transparency and purposiveness," the Congress Party's foreign affairs chief, J.N. Dixit, told Dawn. Mr Dixit, a former high commissioner in Islamabad, stressed that the ongoing talks with Pakistan would be intensified if the Congress had a say in the new government.
Exit and opinion polls suggested that a new government would almost certainly have a role for the Congress either as a direct participant or as an ally supporting its candidate from outside.
"There cannot be any territorial alienation of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. There can be marginal adjustment along the Line of Control in Kashmir, as far as those aspects are related to the ground reality," Mr Dixit said.
He said the Congress policy would emphasise the continuity of the interaction between India and Pakistan between 1984 and 1996 when the party was in power. Asked to point out what would be different with the policies of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Mr Dixit said the main problem with the current policy was its lack of clarity and endless contradictions.
"Now they say ladai aar paar ki ho gi (we will fight to the finish) then they move to the next subject of akhand bharat (united, undivided India). At the same time they say they are ready to discuss everything on Kashmir. There is no cohesion, no credibility."
The Congress on its part has clarified that its party president Sonia Gandhi will be the prime ministerial candidate only if it wins a majority on its own, an unlikely prospect.
The party is sending out signals to its allies that no leader will be thrust on them, if a coalition opposed to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's National Democratic Alliance (NDA) stakes claim to form the government. A party spokesman said the party would sit together with like-minded parties, after the elections and decide on the leadership issue.
Exit polls said India's ruling coalition will either fail to notch up a majority in parliament or barely make it. At the end of the five-phase polling on Monday, the Aaj Tak channel predicted 248 seats for Mr Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its NDA allies.
While the BJP and allies were tipped to lose 54 seats since the 1999 elections the Congress and its allies were projected to gain the same number to bring their tally to 191.
Aaj Tak predicted 104 seats for non-Congress and non-BJP parties. STAR Television projected a slightly more comfortable 263-275 seats for the BJP and its allies and 174-186 for the Congress and its allies. Other parties were tipped to get 86 to 98 seats.
Any party or coalition would need at least 272 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, to form a government. The Star-C voter as well as the Sahara-DRS Survey showed the Congress-led combine improving its performance over last time with the DRS poll giving it between 171 and 181 seats while the Star poll projected between 174 and 186 seats for the Sonia Gandhi-led combine.
Early seat projections for other parties by Star ranged between 86 and 98 while the Sahara-DRS poll gave it between 92 and 102 seats. In Kerala, none of the surveys showed the BJP opening its account. While the Zee survey gave the Congress-led UDF getting seven seats, CPI-M led LDF was getting 11 and others two out of the 20 seats in the state.
