Indian opposition leader Sonia Gandhi faced an unprecedented challenge to her family's leadership of the country's oldest political party Sunday with analysts suggesting her victory was already fait accompli.
Some 8,000 members of the Congress party's electoral college began voting nationwide from 10:00 am (0430 GMT) to pick the party's new president for the next three years.
Results of the election were due on Wednesday and some analysts said the key question would be the margin of victory between Gandhi and her challenger.
Gandhi's challenger, Jitendra Prasada, a 62-year-old veteran from the politically important state of Uttar Pradesh, appeared on the defensive ahead of Sunday's ballot.
Prasada, a confidant of assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia's husband, told the Indian Express daily that he was not trying to take away all that India's first family, the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, had done for the Congress.
"The dynasty has contributed in a big way," he said.
Prasada said his challenge was aimed at refurbishing the Congress' image, bringing greater democracy within the party and reinvigorating the grassroots worker.
Prasada has also accused Gandhi of running the party like a fiefdom through a small coterie out of touch with ground realities.
"The workers are demoralized. The link between the organization and the people are the workers. If the link is weak, the organization is away from the workers ... The Congress was leader-oriented, now it has to be worker-oriented," he said in remarks published Sunday.
A relaxed-looking Gandhi, meanwhile, went to cast her ballot in the Uttar Pradesh state capital Lucknow, where Prasada too was due to cast his vote.
The usually stern widow, sporting a white sari with black polka dots, was seen chatting and smiling with party workers ahead of the vote.
M.J. Akbar, editor of the Asian Age daily and a former Congress official, said although Gandhi was set to trounce Prasada in the polls, her knee-jerk reaction was reminiscent of her autocratic mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, infamous for imposing emergency rule in India.
"Sonia models herself on Indira Gandhi. Is that why there is a whiff of emergency in the Congress at the thought of an election?
"This is the situation when Sonia Gandhi is expected to win by a landslide victory. We can only contemplate what would have been Prasada's destiny if he had the hint of a chance," Akbar said.
Gandhi's supporters had clashed with Prasada's admirers at the party's headquarters in New Delhi when he had filed his nomination for Sunday's election.
Political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan said the important question in the elections would be the margin of the victory.
"If Prasada polls anywhere between 500 to 700 votes, then it will be a blow to Gandhi," says Rangarajan, "which could happen."
An intra-party commission which examined the reasons for the Congress party's poor showing in the 1999 general election found seven to 10 percent of Congressmen blamed Gandhi's foreign origins.
Critics in the Congress also accuse the Italian-born Gandhi of favoring Christian politicians and helping them to seats of power.
The elections have been muddied by accusations by Prasada that the run-up to the polls had been unfair with senior Congress leaders snubbing him during his nationwide campaign tour. He also says the voters' list has been doctored.
Ram Niwas Mirdha, a Congress leader overseeing the elections, admitted late Saturday that there had been "serious shortcomings.
"There have been many complaints and they could well be true ... The problems have cropped up because we have not gone by rules" -- NEW DELHI (AFP)
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