NEW DELHI, Dec 4: Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party surged to a massive win in three vital states in north India on Thursday, leaving the main opposition Congress party worried about prospects for next year’s parliamentary elections.

Mr Vajpayee, who left for Nigeria to attend a Commonwealth summit on Thursday, ruled out widely speculated snap polls for the Lok Sabha, indicating that his party’s victory in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh over Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s Congress party, in power there, was not reason enough to take the avoidable risk.

Senior BJP leader and former minister Pramod Mahajan said general elections were likely to be held in September. Parliamentary elections, held every five years, are not due until October next year.

“There is a choice between a summer and September election, I am 100 per cent sure they will be on schedule,” Mr Mahajan said.

“We still need time to prepare for the polls in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. We also have to sort out NDA problems (Mr Vajapyee’s ruling alliance) in Haryana and Tamil Nadu. We need three to four months time for polls if we have to go beyond 180 seats,” he added.

Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishan Advani said the BJP would probe the reasons for losing the Delhi assembly to the Congress, which was also key province in the fray in the Dec 1 polls, seen as a semifinal before next year’s general elections.

The BJP had lost all the regions that returned the results on Thursday to the Congress in November 1998, despite a nationalist surge that had followed the May nuclear tests that year.

Analysts said a politically moderate and economically liberal line promoted by Mr Vajpayee spurred the BJP’s victory, not foreseen by any of the major opinion polls.

“It was a vote for BSP but for Bijli Sadak Pani (electricity, roads, and water),” said Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta. He was playing on the words BSP, or the Bahujan Samaj Party of low caste Dalits, which had promised support to the Congress in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh.

Mr Vajpayee’s aides stressed that the BJP had refrained from campaigning on its familiar emotive issues of Ram temple and uniform civil code, that worry Muslims. They said it was too early to assess whether Mr Vajpayee’s recent peace overtures with Pakistan had played any significant hand in the unexpected victory.

Ms Gandhi was huddled in a conference with senior aides, who said the party would soon consider the impact of the setback to her election prospects next year.