India Goes to the Polls

...Today, most of them actively support Krishna Menon as a "progressive" member of the Nehru Cabinet...

...Bombay's Labor Minister, Shantilal Shah, who is candidate for the State legislature on the Congress ticket in a constituency which forms part of the Defense Minister's, has said that he will not ask his supporters to vote for Krishna Menon...

...There have been rumors that her father is attempting to build her up politically...

...And, as in the case of other parties, its manifesto is not really different enough from that of the Congress— which also proclaims Socialism as the common goal—to make it attractive...

...Another Congress Member of Parliament, Raghu Vira, has also resigned from the party, as well as from Parliament, to record his protest against Krishna Menon's continued presence in a non-Communist party...

...It is no rumor, however, that she thinks Krishna Menon has a "brilliant" mind...

...and the Jan Sangh 250, plus more than a thousand for the state legislatures...

...Sharokh Sabavala is The New Leader's correspondent in India...

...Here mingle Hindus, Moslems, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and Buddhists from every state—an India in miniature...

...Communist fortunes in the elections are more difficult to predict than those of the other Opposition parties...

...Thus once again it is said that a vote against the Defense Minister is a vote against Nehru, a strategy which in the last two general elections won millions of votes for the Congress party...

...In Kerala, where 9 of 18 members sent to Parliament are Communists, the party may also suffer losses...

...True, in the Lok Sabha the Communists now have only 28 seats, the Praja Socialists 20, and the Jan Sangh (reformist wing of the orthodox Hindu Mahabha) 4. There are also 36 seats held by independents and 42 others divided among the smaller splinter parties...

...One of the results of Kripalani's aggressive campaign, which the Bombay and national press give considerable prominence, is a growing defection within the ranks of the ruling party...

...The most interesting, and perhaps most significant, single contest is between J. B. Kripalani, a former Congress party President, who is running as an independent supported by the Jan Sangh, the Swatantra and the Praja Socialist parties, and Defense Minister V. K. Krishna Menon...

...Over the last decade-and-a-half the Congress party has given this country security, stability and a measure of ordered progress...

...This democratic exercise, carried out on a gigantic scale, seems almost unnecessary: There is not one chance in a hundred that the voters will empower, either in New Delhi or in the state capitals, any party other than the Indian National Congress...

...On the other hand, the party appears quite likely to lose its present eminence as the group with the largest number of opposition seats in the Lower House...

...The party certainly cannot outlast Nehru, and there are signs that it will split asunder even in his lifetime...

...Moreover, Congress party canvassers argue that Krishna Menon is only Nehru's mouthpiece, the mere instrument of his policy...

...It is bringing to the voters a list of anti-Congress grievances which includes mounting unemployment, widening income disparities, failure of the housing program and the Government's inability to maintain India's territorial integrity...

...Opposing the Party's left wing is the Congress' old guard and many of its youngest members, rallying around such figures as Food Minister S. K. Patil, Finance Minister Morarji Desai and Home Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri...

...But Bombay voters, who are more sophisticated than their fellow-countrymen, are not likely to fall for this gambit...

...But an unusually large number of candidates has been entered in the forthcoming elections: The Communists have put up 150...

...These are both "live" issues in the regions which border China and Pakistan...

...This is a most comfortable position, but as it gets older and more shop-worn the Congress is beginning to fear that it may have to do more than doze away the hours on the overcrowded back-benches of Parliament and the provincial legislatures...

...Twenty-five members of the Congress' Youth Forum have resigned from the party and announced the formation of an "anti-Menon" front to aid Kripalani...

...What is more, the Communists have not even put tip an official candidate against the Defense Minister this time...

...He recently addressed a rally of half a million people in Krishna Menon's constituency...

...the Right-wing Swatantra more than 100...

...In over 200 election rallies thus far, the indefatigable Kripalani has been telling increasingly large audiences that Krishna Menon is a crypto-Communist who is trying to subvert the Congress party, a man who is "giving a wrong twist" to India's defense and foreign policies, an indiscreet spender of public money and a national menace as Defense Minister...

...Nevertheless, in such states as West Bengal and Maharashtra, the Communists may win a number of seats on purely regional issues, or at least hold most of what they now have...

...The Praja Socialists list Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Mysore, Maharashtra and Gujarat as the states where their party is most likely to emerge as the principal opposition...

...Prime Minister Nehru, who has enormous personal influence, still stands behind his Defense Minister...

...In such scattered regions as Rajasthan, Bihar and Andhra, the Swatantra party, while also disapproving of Nehru's foreign policy, is trying to gain strength with the argument that Indian planning is slowly but surely leading to a totalitarian state...

...Throughout 1961, a number of Communists in the Punjab, Bombay and elsewhere resigned from their party and joined the Congress...

...The prize is the latter's North Bombay constituency, which has roughly 800,000 voters and includes many of the residential and industrial suburbs of Bombay city (population: four million) and a large number of fishing villages and communities along the coast...

...In the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) it commands 365 of a total of 505 seats...

...How this will affect the voting remains to be seen...

...And so in its usual muddled way, India once more goes to the polls to put the Congress party in for another five-year term—perhaps its last...

...Its fears are partly justified...

...Nehru's position in this tussle continues to be ambiguous...

...Except for Kerala, where it is in uneasy coalition with the Praja Socialist party, the Congress now controis every state...

...In addition to being the cradle of the Indian freedom movement and the country's commercial and maritime hub, Bombay is the center of opposition against Prime Minister Nehru's policy of nonalignment...

...They have won the Jan Sangh several by-election victories, among them one in Delhi...

...Besides, there are enough of them who are ready to vote against Nehru...

...By and large, the real election struggle is not between the ruling Party and the Opposition, but between the right and left wings of the Congress itself...

...India Goes to the Polls By Sharokh Sabavala Bombay Between February 19 and 25, 210 million Indians, 70 per cent of whom still cannot read or write, will visit 20,000 polling booths to choose a Federal government and governments for the 16 Indian states...

...The swift, seemingly effortless Goa operation has also cast some luster on the Defense Minister who, according to some voters, had "made a good clean job of it...

...At the same time, no one knows quite where Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister's daughter, stands within the Congress party...

...All in all, while the other Opposition groups are expected to make some gains everywhere at the expense of the ruling party, the Communists are not...

...Its hostility to Krishna Menon is unmistakable...

...But they are prepared to indicate that the present Government has had a long enough run for its money and can no longer expect to enjoy steam-roller majorities either in the Federal Parliament or in the state legislatures...

...In north India, the Jan Sangh is making a determined bid, basing its challenge on the Government's "inept" handling of the China border situation...

...It also wants an end to Pakistani activities in Kashmir...

...The party is split between its China and Russia wings...

...Each of these parties —and for now this is the sum of their ambitions—expects to emerge from the elections as the principal opposition...

...Chinese aggression in the Himalayas has dealt a heavy blow at its already waning prestige...

...Indians are thus not yet prepared to change the political complexion of their Government...

...It has just lost a stabilizing influence with the death of its General Secretary, Ajoy Ghosh...

...the Praja Socialists 125...

...Consequently, the Congress party is "running scared," as if its very life depended on the outcome...

...While part and parcel of the old guard, his support of Krishna Menon and Mines and Fuels Minister K. D. Malaviya, another "bright pink," is never veiled...

...Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who disdained to do much canvassing 10 years ago, is now systematically visiting state after state, while his party is mobilizing men, money and transport on an unprecedented scale...

...She is likely again to be chosen party President after the elections...