Corruption flack hits Congress in state elections

Manmohan Singh's Congress Party conceded defeat in state elections in Tamil Nadu, where the alleged 2G telecom scam was expected to hurt its ally, the DMK, reports the Economic Times.

Meanwhile, the ruling party (at the head of the United Progressive Alliance) encountered an unexpectedly difficult fight in neighboring Kerala but it returned to power for a third consecutive term in Assam and rode the new popularity of ally Mamata Banerjee (of the Trinamool Congress) to unseat the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in West Bengal — the largest of the five states going to the polls.

Congress spokesperson Jayanthi Natarajan said that the graft issue had played a role in the election results in Tamily Nadu, but added that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had acted strongly against the accused in the lead-up to the polls, the paper said.

"It is the UPA that has always taken transparent and visible action against corruption, as a result of which a DMK minister is today in jail even though elections were round the corner and senior DMK leaders have been interrogated," ET quoted Natarajan as saying.

Potentially, it's those actions that prevented this supposed referendum on Singh's performance as PM from going south. But I wouldn't read the results too positively, considering that the biggest victory (in West Bengal) was tied directly to dissatisfaction with the long-ruling CPI-M government.  In Tamil Nadu, therefore, it was the DMK's loss, as far as a barometer of public opinion goes. And in Bengal, it was Banerjee's win.