May 15, 1999
Web posted at: 5:26 p.m. EDT (2126 GMT)

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- The Hindu nationalist party of India's caretaker prime minister joined with 18 other parties Saturday to form a new alliance in the country's upcoming general elections.

The new National Democratic Alliance largely mirrors the coalition that ruled India for 13 months under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee before it was brought down in a confidence vote April 17.

The new alliance will contest the elections with a common manifesto, said Defense Minister George Fernandes, who convened the meeting of those parties' leaders Saturday. He did not say when the platform would be formulated.

The elections must be held by mid-October, but the independent Election Commission has said it hopes to complete the balloting in September. More than 600 million people are registered to vote in India.

The party or group that wins the largest number of seats in the 545-member lower house of parliament will be called to form the next government.

India's politics have become increasingly fractured over the last decade, with no single party able to form a government on its own.

On Sunday, Vajpayee will formally begin his election campaign from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, the news agency Press Trust of India reported.

Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies are unified mainly by their opposition to the Congress Party, which governed India for four decades after its independence in 1947.

Gandhi's origins an issue

The BJP has criticized Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi, 52, for her non-Indian origins. Hindu groups considered close to the BJP have said the country's prime minister should be a native of India.

Pamphlets and e-mail messages have raised questions about the Italian-born Gandhi's decision to acquire Indian citizenship more than a decade after her marriage in 1968 to Rajiv Gandhi, who ruled India as prime minister for five years until 1989.

According to Gandhi's party, the BJP has engaged in a "slanderous personal disinformation campaign" by questioning whether Gandhi can lead India.

Sonia, as Gandhi is popularly called, was quoted as saying she will not buckle under BJP's onslaught.

"The Congress, and I personally, would like to make it quite clear that I cannot be intimidated by these attacks just as my mother-in-law (Indira Gandhi) and Rajiv were not," Gandhi told Congress Party leaders in a meeting Saturday.

Congress is expected to soon announce its alliances with regional parties opposed to the right-wing BJP.

Five communist parties form India's third main group, but their strength is mostly confined to two states, West Bengal and Kerala.

The BJP-led coalition lost power last month by one vote in a confidence motion in the lower house of parliament, plunging the country into its third general election in three years.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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