Samajwadi party leads in early returns

A regional socialist party led in the early count Tuesday in assembly elections in India's largest state, a major testing ground for the ruling Congress Party. The election for Uttar Pradesh state's 403 assembly seats had been a vigorously fought by various political parties, including the Congress Party which heads the ruling federal coalition in New Delhi. Initial counting, however, showed the Samajwadi Party, a regional party, had taken an early lead, with the Bharatiya Janata Party, the country's main opposition, in second place, CNN-IBN television reported. Results from assembly polls in four other states also were coming in, but all attention was on the 200-million population Uttar Pradesh state, where the young Rahul Gandhi, seen as the next Indian prime minister to succeed Manmohan Singh, had campaigned hard for the Congress Party. Rahul is the son of Sonia Gandhi, Congress president, and the late Rajiv Gandhi, former Indian prime minister. India, with a population of 1.2 billion, is the world's largest democracy. A win in Uttar Pradesh and other states would greatly boost the chances in the 2014 general elections for the Congress Party, whose government has been hit by a number of scandals, charges of corruption, high inflation, soaring prices and an economic slowdown. In Uttar Pradesh, exist polls had shown the Samajwadi Party, led by Akihlesh Yadav, another young politician and his father, winning the most seats, with Congress not doing so well. Uttar Pradesh is currently ruled by the Bahujan Samaj Party, another regional party, led by Kumari Mayawati, a powerful orator who draws her main political strength both from the state's Dalits, or those who are supposed to be in the lowest rung of India's outlawed Hindu caste system, and the high-caste Brahmins. Her government, however, had come under strong criticisms from opponents. Votes of Muslims, the largest minority in Uttar Pradesh, were also to be a crucial deciding factor in the latest poll. A Congress win in the various assembly polls would make it easier for it to get badly needed economic reforms passed in New Delhi and considerably strengthen its position in the 2014 national elections. Those reforms would include easing of rules for foreign investment in the lucrative retail sector, land acquisition, food security and taxes, The Wall Street Journal reported. "The power equations at the center [New Delhi] are constantly affected by what happens in the states," C.V. Madhukar, director of Parliamentary Research Service, told the Journal.