Vajpayee's government concedes defeat

People have rejected the BJP rhetoric on richness and religious based politics

New Delhi(AsiaNews/AP) - The ruling Hindu nationalist party conceded defeat Thursday, opening the way for Sonia Gandhi to become India's first foreign-born leader and restore her family's dynasty to power in a dramatic election upset in the world's largest democracy.

Unofficial results indicated that millions of rural poor people abandoned Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, believing they had been left behind by the country's economic boom and rejecting his Hindus-first message in favor of the secularism of Gandhi's Congress party.

Vajpayee was expected to resign later Thursday. His decision to call the election six months early was a devastating miscalculation. After more than four hours of vote-counting for 539 of Parliament's 543 elected seats, all television stations cited unofficial figures showing Gandhi's bloc ahead of the governing alliance.

"We have not got the mandate of the people," said Venkaiah Naidu, president of Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party, adding that the decision to concede defeat was taken at a 90-minute meeting of the BJP and its allied party leaders.

It was an embarrassing defeat for Vajpayee, who called elections ahead of time, confident of increasing his coalition's majority in Parliament, based on a fast-growing economy and prospects of peace with Pakistan.

But Congress focused its campaign on the country's 300 million people who still live on less than a dollar a day. It hammered away at the lack of even basic infrastructure, electricity and potable water for the rural poor. The voters also appeared to have listened to Gandhi's push for a secular India.

In the western state of Gujarat, the heartland of support for the BJP and scene of horrific Hindu-Muslim violence, voters seem to have rejected religion-based politics. Early results showed the Congress had won seven of the state's 26 Parliament seats, while the BJP had retained six.

A leader in Vajpayee's coalition said the results were "totally against our expectations." Outside Sonia Gandhi's residence, supporters celebrated with drums and firecrackers.

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