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MUMBAI: India's ruling Congress party, flush from an election win in the state at the heart of finance and film, will now be better armed to deal with demanding communist allies, newspapers and analysts say.
The victory in Maharashtra state, India's second-most populous, was good news for flagging economic reforms, they said.
The message was harsh for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which lost ground in the state assembly election last Wednesday, just months after losing power in national elections, they said.
"There will be more stability in the federal government now and the Congress can dictate its own policies which is good news for the economy," said D.H. Pai Panandikar, president of the private economic think tank, the RPG Foundation.
"The message is that the Congress is the preferred party of voters and that augurs well for reforms."
The Congress, along with regional allies like the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) won 141 seats in the 288-member assembly in Maharashtra, India's second-most industrialized state with 100 million people. While not a majority, support from a few more allies will see Congress and NCP retain power.
The alliance defeated the BJP and its hardline Hindu ally, the Shiv Sena, which together won 117 seats. Independents won 30.
The BJP, which with its allies had held 128 seats before the vote, has yet to recover from its shock national defeat in May.
"For the BJP, its moment in Indian politics may have passed," said Zoya Hasan with the Centre for Political Studies at New Delhi's prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University.
MORE POWER: The Times of India said the Maharashtra win would give Congress president Italian-born Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh more confidence in dealing with the communists, who are key supporters of the left-leaning federal coalition.
"Today, Sonia has arguably emerged as the tallest leader in the country. It's with this new stature that she can deal with her allies and opponents," the newspaper said.
The communists, who won a record 60 out of 545 parliament seats in the federal elections, have stalled the policies of Singh, who launched India's economic reforms in 1991.
These include moves to expand foreign direct investment in the fast-growing insurance, aviation and telecoms sectors.
However, the Congress victory in Maharashtra has been marred by wrangling over who should head the state, a region eyed hungrily by political parties because it contributes 12 per cent of gross domestic product and pays two-thirds of corporate taxes.
TUSSLE FOR TOP SPOT: The NCP won 71 seats in the state poll, two more than the Congress, prompting it to demand the chief minister's chair.
To sort out any misunderstanding, Gandhi met Sharad Pawar, the chief of the NCP and federal food minister, on Sunday in the Indian capital.
"Whoever has more seats, the chief minister should be from that party," Sharad Pawar, federal agriculture minister and NCP chief, told reporters in New Delhi.
But the Congress said it would not give up that easily.
"There is no question of a fight with the NCP. It's our right and the post should naturally come to us," said Congress spokeswoman Vijaya Patil in Mumbai.
Alliance leaders put an optimistic spin on the row over the chief minister's job in Maharashtra, which is the size of Germany and the Netherlands put together.
"This issue can be amicably sorted out," Praful Patel, aviation minister and senior NCP leader told reporters. "But the fact is that we have won more seats."
HUMILIATING DEFEAT: Analysts said the bickering between the Congress and NCP was expected but overshadowed the message behind the BJP's defeat.
"The political discourse has shifted from identity and religion-based politics to a discourse on social and economic issues. This is where the BJP has lost out," Hasan said.
The BJP first came to power in 1996 on the strength of its Hindu agenda. But it focused on a strong economy during the federal elections, only to be voted out by millions of rural poor who felt left out of the boom.-Reuters
