India election campaign ends in acrimony

[Darranar]

India's mammoth election campaign has ended with both main parties trading insults as exit and opinion polls showed a close race to the finish line.

Much is at stake in a campaign that began with the ruling party of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, buoyed by a booming economy, confident of victory but now finding the main opposition Congress party doing better than expected.

Monday's last round of the three-week poll, the world's largest democratic exercise, is the toughest for Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the ruling coalition.

Opinion polls predict the BJP and its allies will struggle to win more than a third of the seats being contested on Monday and could leave his coalition short of a majority.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/346D0577-7B17-4929-ABE9-5A3DEF9E4A83.htm