Indian leftists pick new prime minister candidate
May 14, 1996
Web posted at: 3:00 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT)
From Bureau Chief Anita Pratap
NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- The leftist National Front-Left Front picked Deve Gowda as its third choice for prime minister Tuesday after two other candidates declined the offer.
The choice of Gowda, described as a pragmatic socialist, was presented to President Shankar Dayal Sharma, who must decide which political group will form a coalition government. There was no clear winner in the recent elections.
No party won the 269 seats required for majority rule in the 545-seat parliament. Sharma's decision was not expected until Wednesday at the earliest.
No thanks
Gowda, 63, chief minister of the southern state of Karnataka, emerged as the NF-LF candidate after the alliance failed to persuade Marxist Jyoti Basu and former Prime Minister V.P. Singh to run for the premiership.
Basu's Communist Party of India-Marxist said it still backed an NF-LF attempt to form a secular government to keep out the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which emerged from the April-May elections as the biggest winner with 186 seats.
The NF-LF won at least 111 seats. Prime Minister Narasimha Rao's Congress party won 136 seats. Smaller parties won a total of at least 101 seats
While Gowda is a senior leader of the Janata Dal, the major component of the NF-LF, he does not have a national following, said Sumit Ganguly, a professor at Hunter College in New York City.
However, if the NF-LF can form a coalition with smaller regional parties, Gowda "has a fighting chance" of becoming the next leader of the world's largest democracy, Ganguly told CNN. (170K AIFF or WAV sound)
Reuters contributed to this report.
Related stories:
- Pivotal Elections: India
- India's parties struggle for dominance - May 11, 1996
- India's political future in doubt as Rao resigns - May 10, 1996
- Ruling party doomed to election defeat - May 9, 1996
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