“We can form the government without the Left,” Trade Minister Kamal Nath said in an interview yesterday in New Delhi. “We’re not looking at the Communists at the moment.”
Congress may need to woo former allies or find new partners to form a majority in parliament after elections that concluded May 13, exit polls showed. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the communists, or Left-wing parties, parted ways in July after four years of wrangling on issues ranging from allowing retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. into the country to increased foreign ownership of insurers.
“I don’t think Congress will make the mistake of wanting to form a government with the Left again unless all other strategies have been exhausted,” said Prem Shankar Jha, an independent political analyst and former aide to former Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh.
The benchmark Sensitive Index rose for the 10th week, the longest winning streak in almost three years, on optimism Singh’s re-election without communist interference will give the government more scope to tackle slowing economic growth.
Election results will be announced tomorrow.
Third-Largest Bloc
India’s four Communist parties currently hold 61 of 543 lower-house seats, making them the third-largest bloc in parliament after groups led by Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. Exit polls indicated the Communists may lose almost half of those seats and Congress has already forged an alliance with the Trinamool Congress Party in the Communist stronghold of West Bengal.
The communists did support patent laws and the establishment of tax-free trade zones, “but they do carry an ideological baggage and sometimes that is a problem, which is a deterrent to economic reforms,” Nath said.
Nomura Holdings Inc. said last month that India’s next government would offer better prospects for economic reforms without relying on Communist allies for support.
“If the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Congress form the new government not beholden to the Communists, we would remain cautiously optimistic about India’s prospects and firmly of the view that the potential growth rate could rise to 10 percent in the medium term,” Nomura said in a report.
India’s economic growth rate may ease to 6 percent in the year that started April 1, the slowest pace since 2003, the central bank said April 21.
Exit Polls
Six television networks forecast the ruling alliance led by Congress may emerge just ahead of a rival grouping led by the BJP. CNN-IBN predicted Congress and its allies will get as many as 205 seats compared with a maximum 185 for the opposing coalition. Star News-Nielsen and News X gave the Congress-led bloc 199 seats to 191 for the BJP.
The Communist parties won’t support a Congress-led administration, the Economic Times reported yesterday, citing Prakash Karat, general secretary of the biggest group, the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Still, to keep out its arch rival BJP, whose Hindu ideology the Left opposes, the communists may back Singh for a second term in office, the Hindustan Times reported, without citing anyone. The paper quoted Karat as saying no government is possible without the support of the Communists.
Nath said internal voter surveys by Congress indicate a stronger showing than that projected in the exit polls, reducing the number of partners it will need to form a government. The party is prepared to negotiate with the Communists if that proves necessary.
“Of course, if we have to do business with them, then we will have to negotiate with them the terms of business,” he said. “They left. We did not throw them out.”
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