Vijayawada, Mar 08: Riding on the nationwide 'India Shining' wave, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) will win hands down in the Lok Sabha polls on the plank of development and improve its tally in the north as well as south, BJP president M Venkaiah Naidu asserted today. ''Karnataka will be the gateway to the BJP's ascendancy to power in the south, while the party is sure to win two-thirds of the Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. The anti-Indira wave after the infamous emergency in the 1970s was restricted to the north, but now the pro-NDA wave is blowing all over the country,'' he claimed while talking to reporters at the airport here.

People in Uttar Pradesh ''are fed up with the caste-based politics'' of Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati, he contended, adding that independent surveys showed that the NDA was set to sweep the polls with the opposition in total disarray. With no positive programme to highlight, the Congress was unable to firm up alliances, with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) agreeing for ties in Maharashtra but not at the centre, the Janata Dal (Secular) making it clear that it was ready to align with the Congress at the centre but not in Karnataka. Besides, the Communists were not coming forward to even join hands before the elections, the BJP chief said.

The opposition had no leader to match Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and there was no alternative to the BJP, he said, dismissing the road shows of Congress president Sonia Gandhi as a ''mere side show'' while development ushered in by the NDA government was the ''main show.'' Bureau Report