Parties seek allies in tight election race

By Surojit Gupta

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's ruling Congress-led coalition and its main rivals were jostling to secure new allies on Thursday to boost their possible parliamentary numbers after exit polls said both would fall well short of a majority.

The country's largest communist party, considered a key player in a fractured verdict, signalled it would do everything possible to stop the opposition Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from coming to power.

Three exit polls on Wednesday showed the Congress-led coalition slightly ahead of the BJP alliance, but both groups needed smaller allies to gain a parliamentary majority.

"The left parties and our allies in the Third Front will not give BJP an opportunity to exploit the post-poll situation to install its government," Prakash Karat, chief of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), told The Economic Times newspaper.

The left has always seen the pro-business BJP, which shot to prominence on a Hindu revivalist campaign in the 1980s, as an extremist religious group.

The probable lack of a clear winner has stoked concerns that the coalition that emerges after a month of voting may be unstable and soft-pedal on the next stage of reforms in Asia's third-largest economy, which is striving to be a global player.

A weak coalition may have little room to manoeuvre on the economy, because a shaky coalition is seen as unlikely to push key reforms such as privatisation and raising the foreign investment limit in the insurance sector.

"There is, of course, also the possibility of the next government being too precariously placed to last full term," the Economic Times said, commenting on the raft of television exit polls released after voting ended on Wednesday