INDIA'S RULING Congress Party yesterday won three of five key provincial elections despite expectations of a hostile response from voters upset over its clumsy handling of last month's Mumbai terror strikes and the continuing economic decline.
Surprising victories were won in the capital New Delhi and the remote northeastern state of Mizoram bordering Burma, as the party emerged as the largest single party in western Rajasthan province following results from five state polls held over the past month.
The main opposition Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party, the BJP, managed to retain the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, despite a stiff fight from Congress, as well as neighbouring Madhya Pradesh province.
Voting in insurgency-ridden northern Jammu and Kashmir province, however, is continuing. The outcome will be known later this month.
Analysts view the outcome as an indicator of voter intention ahead of national elections due before May 2009 in which the Congress Party and the BJP would be the main rivals.
But the Congress Party's victory in Delhi, the third in a row, was the most stunning and one which the BJP termed as "shocking".
The BJP had hoped that the Mumbai terror attacks, in which 172 people including nine terrorists died, would give it the electoral edge over the Congress Party.
But analysts said voters felt the attacks were not an issue to be politicised and so had rejected the BJP's narrow approach to this larger, national problem.
Delhi's chief minister Sheila Dikshit was largely credited with the Congress Party's victory due largely to several infrastructural projects she had launched to upgrade services. "It's an outright rejection of the BJP playing up the terror card," Ms Dikshit said.
The key election issues were rising prices, economic recession and security following a spate of bombings in cities across India over the past 18 months, most of which, like the Mumbai attacks, had been blamed on Islamic militants.
The BJP campaigned for tougher anti-terror laws and a pro-active response to the bombings.
There was still no reaction late yesterday from India's federal government to the arrest in Pakistan of a senior commander of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT or Army of the Pure) Islamic group that Delhi blames for the Mumbai attacks.
News reports from Islamabad quoting unnamed security sources said Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the LeT's operational commander, was among 15 people arrested during a raid late on Sunday on a terrorist training camp in Pakistani-administered Kashmir run by a charity linked to the Islamist group. Lakhvi was one of the main people responsible for planning and launching the Mumbai attacks, according to the statement made by the only apprehended gunman of the 10 who attacked the port city on November 26th.