India?s ruling coalition wooed estranged partners yesterday as fears mounted that it may not win a majority in a parliamentary election, raising questions on the future of economic reforms in the world?s biggest democracy. Investors, political parties and voters were on tenterhooks a day before votes were counted following the mammoth election that began with Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, predicting an easy win but now facing a voter backlash.

The opposition Congress party of Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, written off in pre-poll surveys but bolstered by a stunning win in local elections in a southern state, also began to woo regional parties despite having opposed them in the polls.

Congress?s rout of the Telegu Desam party, a key member of Vajpayee?s coalition, in Andhra Pradesh state sent shock waves through the ruling alliance and reinforced predictions of a hung parliament. ?We are trying to get them back?, told a senior leader of Vajpayee?s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) about the negotiations with prospective allies to form a government. ?Even last time we got some parties to join us after the elections and some even after the results?, he said referring to the 1999 general election.

The politician said coalition leaders were trying to win back at least four regional parties that had walked out of Vajpayee?s government before the polls to ensure the alliance gets the 273 seats needed for a majority in the 545-member lower house.

Votes cast in the five-stage election that ended on Monday will be counted today and results should be available by the end of the day.

Repackaged reforms

Vajpayee had banked on a strong economy, a good monsoon and improving ties with Pakistan sweeping him back to office. But his campaign motto of ?India shining? failed to resonate with many rural and urban poor who feel excluded from the economic boom and the signs of a poor performance have thrown a question mark over the future of economic reforms.

The majority of India?s population lives on farms or in villages and in this election, as before, have come out to vote in larger numbers than their wealthier, urban countrymen.

Analysts say reforms will probably continue but may have to be repackaged to counter the perception they have only benefited corporate India and the urban middle class. ?This is not good news for economic reforms or fiscal consolidation,? P.K. Basu, managing director of Robust Economic Analysis Pte, Singapore, said of the likely hung parliament. ?For a foreign investor there are concerns about the nature of the coalition and the pace of economic reforms.?

Some foreign fund managers said they would accelerate sales of Indian shares if Vajpayee?s pro-reform coalition failed to capture a clear majority.

?The inability to form a government on day one will bring about political uncertainty. And if it is prolonged, we would be inclined to shift money to other regional markets,? said Timothy Julien, regional director at Sydney-based ING Investment Management Asia Pacific.

India?s benchmark stock market index ended nearly flat yesterday as investors waited for the results of the election. The rupee was cautious, surrendering early gains. The index fell over four percent on Tuesday after the loss of the Telegu Desam in Andhra Pradesh. It has fallen 10 percent ? wiping nearly $28 billion off the value of India?s publicly traded companies ? since exit polls first suggested a hung parliament two weeks ago.

The BJP leader said the party had not expected a hung parliament and the magnitude of the loss in Andhra Pradesh state was ?totally unexpected?. Andhra?s technology-friendly Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, a BJP ally, was unseated as he failed to focus as much on the rural poor hit by severe drought as he did on transforming his state into a hub for IT firms, analysts said.

The result was a warning to Vajpayee, they said. ?If Atal was the all-India mascot of ?India shining?, Naidu was its poster boy in Andhra. Both banked heavily on the ?feel-good factor?, an editorial in the Times of India said.

Y.P. Rajesh Surojit Gupta

E-counting gives India an election result in hours

• India?s technology revolution has finally spread to its mammoth national election. In the past, counting the hundreds of millions of votes cast in elections in the world?s biggest democracy would take an army of government officials anything between 30 and 40 hours. They would physically count and tally paper ballots before results could be declared. Not anymore.

When officials today take up counting the 370 million votes cast in the election that ended this week, first results are expected in just two hours because electronic voting machines will be used nationally for the first time. Votes stored inside the battery-powered portable machines will be counted simultaneously in more than 1 200 tightly guarded centres in 855 towns and cities in the country?s first all-electronic vote. About 1,1 million of these ?tamper-proof? machines, which record a vote at the press of a button, have been kept in ?strong rooms? or safe houses near counting centres, some since the first round on April 26, and will be opened at 8.00 am (0230 GMT). To tally the contents, election officials will simply press the ?result? switch to automatically count the votes cast for each candidate from each of the 541 parliamentary constituencies where voting has been completed. A re-poll has been ordered in two seats in the 545-member lower house of parliament, while two MPs are nominated.All votes cast in a constituency will then be added up and the winner declared according to the first-past-the-post system.

Voters, many of them illiterate, registered their vote by pressing a blue button against the name of a candidate or his party symbol on the voting unit which can take a maximum of 16 candidates for each constituency.

The first result is expected within two hours from the smaller constituencies, such as the idyllic Lakshadweep islands in the Arabian Sea which has just 36,000 voters, election spokesman Malhotra said. Indian political parties have used a bewildering range of symbols from the lotus for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the hand for the main challenger Congress to elephant, balloon, frying pan, cricket bat, fork, carrot, neck tie and lock and key by the smaller parties and independent candidates.

Sanjeev MIGLANI