India’s beleaguered ruling coalition has managed to avoid a major voter backlash over a series of embarrassing corruption scandals, winning three of five regional polls and overturning two communist state governments, results showed on Friday. The coalition fared worse than expected in Tamil Nadu, where voters punished a regional ally over a $39 billion telecoms scam that paralysed the national parliament for months and hit foreign investment in Asia’s third-largest economy.
But the loss came as no surprise. It also lost tiny Pondicherry state. But it took two states from the communists — West Bengal in the northeast, where the world’s longest serving democratically elected government was finally unseated, and Kerala in the south. It also won the northeastern state of Assam. Overall, the results were the first good news in months for the suddenly accident-prone government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The main national opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, scarcely improved on its scant presence in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, a sign Congress is still the party to beat ahead of 2014 general elections.
“The election results will lead to some stability at the centre,” said R. K. Gupta, managing director of Taurus Mutual Fund. “It gives Congress more muscle to push through its reforms.”
