Speculation is rife about the fate of the India's political future now that election to the country's lower house of Parliament is in its last leg.
With poll pundits predicting a truncated mandate and difficulties for major coalitions to cobble together one-fourth the total number of seats, astrologers are predicting a “hung house” with no clear winner.
“Neither the Congress nor the BJP will be able to form a government. The congress at the most will get 135-140 seats, while the BJP might gain marginally with 165 seats. The third front and the smaller parties will play an important role in forming the government as the alliances will hunt for new friends,” Delhi-based astrologer Prem Kumar Sharma, a popular television commentator on spirituality and astrology, told this writer in New Delhi.
He said the Prime Minister would not be able to continue and the churning might throw up a “surprise prime ministerial candidate”. “But the third or the fourth (whatever you call it) front will play an important role,” Sharma said. Terming the mandate “indecisive”, he said it was because the planet Venus was in ascendance, along with its attendant moon.
Commenting on the personal horoscope of the leaders, he said the National Democratic Alliance's prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani might come very close to power, but would miss it by a whisker. “The position of the Saturn in his personal horoscope is powerful, but it will not get him to the hot seat this time. The day he filed his nomination was not good,” Sharma said.
He foresees “trouble after the first quarter of the formation of the new government”.
“There will be another election in two years' time which will bring a stable government,” Sharma explained. The time and the date of announcing the polls were not auspicious, the astrologer said. The financial condition would, however, improve.
Mehrauli-based Acharya Chakradhar, a spiritualist and astrologer, also predicts another poll. “The country may face another election in 2011.” The astrologer, who feels that AICC president Sonia Gandhi's personal horoscope is strong enough to guide the Congress through the political melee, advises the country to guard its southern borders.
“There will be a coalition government, but the new dispensation will have to strengthen the country's armed forces,” he said.
According to him, the presence of Mars will help fortify the country's borders. “There are possibilities of large scale violence in the south - southern part of the country and in the southern part of troubled states (even world). In general, the south will be in peril unlike in 2008, when I had predicted that the west would be under attack because Saturn and the two nodes, Rahu and Ketu, were in favour of those opposed to Hindu faith and higher spirituality,” he said.
However, Saturn has moved out of the country's zodiac map in December after the November 26 Mumbai attacks. “There were two eclipses last year a week before before the Mumbai blasts and the year was inauspicious. The markets crashed. This election too will be a lesson for the country,” the acharya said.
The upshot is that economy has been on the road to recovery since March 2009, he said.
Maharaj Shivanand Mishra, an Oakhla-based astrologer and priest, said the aligning of Jupiter and Neptune between May and July may enable new power blocks to make inroads into politics.
“But they will be fence-sitters. They can topple the government any time. But given the shape of the things to come, the government cannot do without them,” he said.
As of now, the country watches with bated breath and fingers crossed.
--Madhusree Chatterjee and Jay Akbar