NEW DELHI: The clear victory for the Congress-led alliance in recent general elections has sidelined an array of regional and left leaning parties, which came to the center stage of Indian politics over the last two decades as national parties lost influence. The elections have also paved the way for the Congress Party to recover its position as India's dominant political force. Days after the Congress Party-led alliance won comfortably in the general elections, Mayawati, the head of a caste-based regional group known as the Bahujan Samaj Party, pledged her party's support to the coalition. Mayawati says she is making the offer to extend a friendly hand to the Congress Party "without any conditions."Hers is among several regional and caste based parties which have volunteered to support the Congress-led alliance, which is returning for its second term in office. This is not what any of these parties had expected to do. Rather they had nurtured ambitions of being wooed by the Congress Party, and driving a hard bargain such as prized seats in the Cabinet in return for their support.Their optimism stemmed from forecasts that the results in this year's election would be even more fractured than it has been in past elections. Since 1991, India has been governed by unwieldy coalition governments, dependent on an array of small parties for their survival.But the 2009 elections reversed the trend. The Congress Party-led alliance confounded all forecasts, and has emerged slightly short of a majority - but strong enough to survive without the support of regional parties.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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