INDIA: India's Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party which heads the federal coalition, has decided to hold general elections before the end of April - cashing in on a booming economy, a bumper harvest and the recent peace moves with nuclear rival Pakistan.
A fractured opposition, unable to forge alliances, and the resounding BJP victories in three of four key state assembly elections last month, have also prompted the Hindu nationalists to advance voting for the 545-member parliament before the September 30th deadline. The government's five-year term ends in October.
"The BJP is ready (for elections). The hour of decision has come," Mr Vajpayee told the party's leaders at the end of its two-day conclave at Hyderabad in southern India. "There is a feel-good factor in every walk of public life," BJP president Mr Venkaiah Naidu said.
"It is natural to think we should have a fresh mandate so we can march even more confidently towards our goal of making India a developed nation by 2020," he added.
Armed with his party's decision for early polls, Mr Vajpayee is expected to convene a cabinet meeting of the 23-party National Democratic Alliance later this week to pass a resolution recommending the dissolution of the Lok Sabha, the elected lower house of parliament.
Parliament would then meet for a day or two to pass an interim budget, after which President A.J. Abdul Kalam would formally dissolve the House.
But the autonomous election commission, which is not bound by the government's recommendations, will decide the poll schedule in the largest exercise of its kind in the world in which more than 650 million people are eligible to vote. Officials indicate that voting would be staggered over three-weeks, ending before the advent of the searing hot summer in late April.
The BJP is buoyant about its chances of returning to power following sustained economic growth that registered an impressive 8 per cent in the last quarter ending December 2003, a record harvest after the best monsoon rains in a decade, low interest rates and a stock market that has registered its best ever performance.
"Normally in elections, there is an anti-incumbency factor against the ruling party," said deputy Prime Minister Mr Lal Kishen Advani referring to voters' traditional unhappiness against the party in power.
Mr Advani, seen as a possible successor to the 79-year old ailing Mr Vajpayee who has often talked of retiring, said this time round there was a mood favouring the "incumbents".
The BJP also plans on targeting the foreign origins of Ms Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born leader of its main rival Congress party, during the campaign.
Ms Gandhi became an Indian citizen only after her husband, Rajiv, became prime minister in the mid-1980s, several years after she arrived to live in the country.
Defence Minister Mr George Fernandes fired the first salvo by accusing Ms Gandhi of being a "liar" in claiming to have a diploma in English from Cambridge University where she met her husband who was assassinated at an election rally in 1991.
Mrs Gandhi retaliated by declaring that the party "was afraid" of a woman. "All I care for is the people," Mrs Gandhi said, certain that the BJP would not be re-elected.