Victory in three state elections by India's ruling Congress party in the face of an economic slowdown and fallout from the Mumbai attacks are no guarantee of success in next year's general election, analysts said on Tuesday. Final results from month-long polls in five states, which came in on Monday and Tuesday, were seen as a first test of the political waters before next year's poll. Analysts said Congress may opt for a later date for the national election in the first half of 2009 that will pit its coalition against an opposition alliance led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Congress won Delhi and the western state of Rajasthan, where the BJP was incumbent, and picked up the small northeastern state of Mizoram in a landslide. The BJP stayed in power with a convincing victory in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, and won in neighboring Chhattisgarh. The results may be a morale boost for Congress, which has suffered a string of state election defeats to the BJP in the last year, but could not be used to forecast the outcome of the national vote, said Rajeev Malik, an economist at Macquarie Securities in Singapore. “The basic lesson for the BJP is it doesn't have its act together as selling itself as a viable alternative to Congress. The BJP, which had hoped its criticism of Congress as being weak on security would reap political dividends, now needs a fresh election strategy, analysts said. “Both political parties are still on notice,” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, president of the Centre for Policy Research, wrote in the Indian Express newspaper on Tuesday. “The fact that the BJP did not manage to take even Delhi suggests ... the party will have a steeper hill to climb.” In the days after the attacks in Mumbai that killed 171 people, there have been massive protests against government inaction. The BJP took out front-page advertisements slamming Congress as being unable to defend the nation. But local governance issues may have trumped the economy and security this time around, and may set the tone going ahead.
