Congress eyes new allies for coalition after Indian election victory

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) defied predictions of a tight election and was only 11 seats short of an outright majority from the 543 seats at stake in the Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament, according to election commission data.
Top Congress leaders, including Manmohan Singh, the prime minister, Sonia Gandhi, the party chief, and Pranab Mukherjee, the foreign minister, met on Sunday to discuss potential allies.A strong Congress-led coalition, free of pressures from its former communist partners, has boosted the prospect of reforms to encourage growth in Asia's third largest economy.
The new government will also have a strong mandate to deal with security issues in a region overshadowed by instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Rahul Gandhi, the Congress dynasty scion credited with inspiring his party's biggest election victory since 1991, has been offered a cabinet post by Mr Singh.
The overwhelming margin by which Congress won has been attributed to Mr Gandhi's reforms of the party's neglected organisation and his strategic decision to shun seat-sharing deals with allies in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
The strategy paid off handsomely, with Congress almost doubling its seats in Uttar Pradesh, while its alliance with the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal defeated the Communist-led Left Front, which almost brought down the government last year when it resigned from the UPA in protest over the US nuclear deal.
Immediately following the result, Dr Manmohan Singh was reconfirmed as prime minister by Mrs Gandhi. In his first speech following the result, Dr Singh paid tribute to Rahul Gandhi's stewardship of the campaign and said he would try to persuade him to join his cabinet.
Mr Gandhi believes he has unfinished business in overhauling the Congress Party organisation, but his supporters now want him to enter the cabinet to prepare for his "destiny" as the country's prime minister.
On Sunday, Captain Satish Sharma, a close Gandhi family adviser and former Congress minister, called for Rahul Gandhi to follow in his grandfather Jawarharlal Nehru's footsteps by becoming India's foreign minister.
"I'm advising him to take a cabinet post and I think he should take what Jawarharlal Nehru was, external affairs minister, as well as prime minister. Rahul can do more for India as foreign minister.
"One hundred percent he will be prime minister one day. With more than 200 seats, he could be now if he wanted to. But he wants Manmohan Singh as PM. I'm going to try to persuade him to take foreign affairs," he told The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Gandhi's sister, Priyanka, on Sunday backed her brother as a future prime minister. "Yes, providing he works hard towards it, goes through the grind and providing he deserves it," she said. link...