Complex colors in India's Pondicherry poll

Complex colors in India's Pondicherry poll

By Narayanan Madhavan

PONDICHERRY, India (Reuters): If there is anything more
daunting than standing for election in India's Pondicherry
province, it is voting.

A heady mix of party rivalries, personality clashes and
coalition equations is compounded by the splintered legacy of
French colonial rule in the province of one million people.

As five Indian states choose new assemblies in local elections
on Thursday, voters in Pondicherry will face a heady array of
similar sounding names and abbreviations and a profusion of
ballot symbols.

Just what the result will be is anybody's guess.

Pondicherry's main town, situated beside a turquoise-green Bay
of Bengal, is surrounded by Tamil Nadu state, which is also going
to the polls on Thursday.

But the same parties which are friends in Tamil Nadu are foes
in Pondicherry.

On a palm-fringed road in Tamil Nadu between two patches of
Pondicherry, Abdullah (one name), a travel agent and worker for
the regional DMK party, banged a table and laughed aloud.

"Party workers are not confused but voters are very confused,"
he says, peering through his spectacles.

Pondicherry, often called Pondy, shook off French rule in
1954, seven years after India won independence from Britain, but
it has managed to preserve its separate identity.

Whitewashed colonial buildings with large French windows and
bougainvillea plants line streets with names such as Rue Francois
Martin and Rue de La Compagnie.

"PMK and AIADMK are running a politics of confusion," says
Abdullah, referring to his party's political rivals.

Regional parties here are peppered with similar sounding names
and abbreviations.

They are split in three separate alliances, with a profusion
of ballot symbols -- the rising sun, a pair of leaves, a mango, a
bell, a swirling top, a raised palm, a bicycle and a sickle.

The DMK is aligned with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to fight an alliance of rival AIADMK
and PMK.

Sonia Gandhi's Congress party is part of the AIDMK-PMK team in
Tamil Nadu, but in Pondicherry, it is fighting a lone battle.

The Congress party now rules Pondicherry but is left on its
own at the polls after its previous allies the AIADMK-PMK team
signed a pact to share power for two and a half years each if
they are voted to power in this election.

The DMK faces its own share of confusion.

Even though Vajpayee's BJP is partnering only the DMK in
Pondicherry, the prime minister's face is also prominent on
posters of DMK's rival, the breakaway MDMK.

This is because the DMK and MDMK are both part of Vajpayee's
rainbow alliance in India's federal government, but bitter rivals
in their home territory in the south.

"This is a new kind of politics. People are frustrated," says
V. Parandaman, a political worker for yet another regional party,
the PMC. "It all now depends on the individual goodwill of the
candidates."

V. Narayanaswamy, the local Congress party chief says: "We are
fighting the elections on local issues and priorities."

Parandaman works for Anglo-French Textiles, a firm jointly
formed by the British and French about a century after they
fought a 1760 colonial battle at Wandiwash, now called Vandavasi,
about 80 km (50 miles) from Pondicherry.

"The Brits got the country, the French got the harbors,"
Abdullah says.

The legacy of French-ruled ports in a British-ruled country
adds another dimension to Pondicherry's elections, this time a
linguistic one.

The port towns of Mahe, Yanam and Karaikkal are part of the
province of Pondicherry, but are hundreds of miles (km) apart.
Together they account for nine of the province's 30 seats.

Pondicherry town and Karaikkal are Tamil-speaking areas. Yanam
falls in a Telugu-speaking zone to the north while Mahe falls in
a Malayalam-speaking area on India's west coast.

Pondicherry has one final electoral complication -- another
throwback to its French colonial past.

Between 7,000 and 9,000 people living there opted to become
French citizens when the territory won its freedom.

They vote separately, although not on Thursday, to elect two
members to an advisory committee of France's parliament.