THE INDIAN Prime Minister, Mr P.V. Narasimha Rao, will resign today after leading his Congress-I party to its worst performance ever in a national election.
Mr Rao's resignation will drop the curtain on his five year old government and pave the way for a coalition to take office.
However, a reluctance to become India's prime minister characterises the three main leaders tipped for the top post.
Mr Vishwanath Pratap Singh, a former prime minister and the preferred candidate of the centrist Janata Dal; vice president K.R. Narayanan, the choice of the Congress-I party, including its dissident faction; and Mr Jyoti Basu, the Marxist chief minister of West Bengal and the Left Front's nominee, are all reportedly loath to take the job.
They are convinced that coalition governments in India are doomed and they would be facing general elections within the next year or so. India's three coalition governments have lasted less than two years - and the last one in 1991 fell after seven months.
Mr Narayanan, a member of India's Harijan, or untouchable class, appears to have little desire to sacrifice another six possible years in office as vice president. A distinguished diplomat and India's former ambassador to Beijing, Mr Narayanan was also a Congress Party minister for foreign affairs and science and technology in the 1980s.
Mr V.P. Singh, the Janata Dal Party's unrivalled choice, having headed the second non Congress coalition government which lasted 11 months in 1991, is unwilling to get burned again. He is reportedly working towards a split in the Congress Party and a tie up between the splinter groups and Janata Dal, a grouping which would accept Mr Narayanan as prime minister.
"We will have to carry the baby," Mr Singh said. "We cannot be afraid that the baby will fall."
But the third candidate, Mr Jyoti Basu, is reportedly not interested in a coalition of "dubious" partners, which he feels would stain not only his own credibility but also that of his Marxist party.
As India's longest serving chief minister he is content for his party to sit in the opposition, a move calculated to force the Congress into splitting and seeking "unholy" alliances which would ultimately destroy it.
Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee of the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP, who has been projected as the prime minister in waiting throughout the election campaign, is keeping his own counsel, even though the BJP has emerged as the single largest party.
Mr Vajpayee (71), a poet, former journalist and a formidable debater has been an MP for 30 years. He was foreign minister in 1977 and 1978, the first of two brief periods when the Congress party was out of power, and he appears uncomfortable with the strident Hindu nationalism promoted by BJP hardliners.
Analysts here think that the BJP, because of its sectarian politics, would have difficulty in finding allies to form a government coalition with the 273 MPs it needs to select India's next prime minister. Mr Vajpayee would like the job.
. An Indian state minister was in critical condition yesterday after trying to kill himself following his electoral defeat in Bihar, the Press Trust of India said. Bihar's animal husbandry minister, Mr Bhola Ram Toofani, stabbed himself in the stomach.
