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Tuesday, May 5, 2009

India's Congress reaches out to Left

NEW DELHI (AFP) — Rahul Gandhi, heir to India's powerful Congress dynasty, reached out to the communists on Tuesday to help form a new government if his party wins marathon general elections.

The olive branch came two days before the penultimate round of voting in the elections, which are being staggered across the country of more than 1.1 billion people over a one month period.

Analysts say Congress is unlikely to be able to form a new coalition without the communists, who are a big force in the eastern state of West Bengal and the southern state of Kerala.

"The field is open to post-poll alliances," Gandhi, Congress's star campaigner, told a news conference in the national capital New Delhi, one of the battlegrounds in Thursday's voting.

"There is a lot of meeting ground with the Left" and Congress on "(income) distribution, health and education," Gandhi said.

But "there is absolutely no meeting ground with (the opposition Hindu nationalist) BJP," said Gandhi, touted as a future prime minister.

The 38-year-old politician is a descendant of the Nehru-Gandhi lineage which has given India three prime ministers and whose mother Sonia is Congress party president and viewed as the nation's most powerful politician.

Gandhi insisted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would be the party's candidate for premier if Congress gets a mandate to seek to form the next government.

"Manmohan Singh is the best prime minister the country can have," said Gandhi. "Congress is going to deliver Manmohan to the country."

But Singh has become a hurdle to Congress's hopes of forming a government because of hostility from the Communists who withdrew their support from the ruling coalition last year to protest the signing of a nuclear pact with the United States.

Media reports have suggested Congress may be forced to ditch Singh, 76, a Gandhi family loyalist, if he proves too much of a liability in forming a coalition.

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