India's opposition leader, Ms Sonia Gandhi (52), yesterday claimed her Congress party would form a new government within two days.
The Italian-born widow of the former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, said she had the support of "friendly parties" which had agreed to support a Congress-led minority government from the "outside", helping it pass legislation.
Ms Gandhi said President K.R. Narayanan had called upon the Congress to explore the possibility of forming the government by producing letters of support from opposition parties.
"We will bring letters of support," Ms Gandhi said after meeting the President yesterday. "We are confident we will have more."
She also insisted the Congress party, with 139 MPs, had managed to secure the majority support of 272 MPs in the Lok Sabha (lower house) to replace the outgoing government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that lost a confidence vote in parliament by a single vote last week. Ms Gandhi would not comment on whether she would lead the government. "It's a premature question. I don't believe in saying things before they happen," she said.
Congress leaders, however, have categorically stated Ms Gandhi, who became an Indian citizen only after her husband became prime minister in 1985, was their only choice to lead a new government.
Despite Ms Gandhi's claims, however, there was no hard evidence Congress had secured the necessary backing in parliament. Even as she met the President to stake her claim, a key centrist party with 20 MPs headed by the former defence minister, Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, announced it would not extend unconditional support to a Congress government.
The outgoing BJP government also questioned Congress's claims. Party leaders said its assertions were "totally misleading" and challenged it to make public the list of MPs whose support it claimed. Party spokesman Mr M. Venkaiah said Congress was "working overtime to engineer defections".
