As results of vote-count in the December 1 elections to new legislatures in the four states came in, the BJP put up much better than the party and pre-poll surveys and exit polls had predicted in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where the party has already secured two-thirds majority.

The Congress, however, succeeded in blunting the anti-incumbency factor in Delhi and hold on to power for another five-year under the leadership of Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit although with a reduced majority than the previous assembly elections in 1998.

The race for power in Chhattisgarh, a state carved out of Madhya Pradesh three years ago, is poised for a close finish with BJP and Congress virtually breathing down on each other's neck as far as the number of seats are concerned in the 90-member state legislature.

Indications so far are that BJP might just scrape through to either get simple majority on its own or emerge as the largest single party.

But the big news of the day is BJP's unprecedented landslide victory in Madhya Pradesh, which has a 230-member legislature and Rajasthan with a 200-strong assembly. Even BJP leaders admitted they did not expect such resounding wins in the two states where the outcome of the elections left Congress stunned.

The Congress suffered massive losses in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan in terms of number of seats it had won in the previous assembly polls in 1998.

This was for the first time that BJP won more than 100 seats in Rajasthan.

So pronounced was the mandate in Madhya Pradesh that incumbent Chief Minister of the state and senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who has ruled the state for a decade at a stretch, conceded defeat within two hours of the start of counting of votes.

There is general agreement in political circles here that severe power crisis and bad condition of roads in Madhya Pradesh were the main reasons for the defeat of Congress.

In Rajasthan, Congress defeat was stunning because pre-poll surveys and exit polls had given its government victory with reduced majority.

Here again, the government's handling of drought for three successive years from the year 2000, anger among state government employees over cut in some of their benefits and caste equations have contributed to Congress' defeat.

In the national capital, the Congress has managed to stem anti-incumbency strain largely due to sharp factionalism in BJP and its aging leadership, which left the party in a disorganised state.

The BJP victories in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan ensure that the two states will have two young women as their first chief ministers in firebrand Hindutva leader Uma Bharati and Vasundhara Raje.

The two ladies won with convincing margins from their constituencies and have all along been projected as BJP chief ministerial candidates.

With this, five Indian states will have women chief ministers. Bihar, Tamil Nadu and Delhi already have women heading the state governments in Rabri Devi, J Jayalalitha and Sheila Dikshit respectively.

The victory of BJP in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and the good show in Chhattisgarh has come after a series of debacles the party suffered in assembly polls in several other states in the last five years. During that period, the party could win on its own polls only in Gujarat and Goa.

The result of December 1 polls in the four states also brings to a halt the Congress' winning streak in most of the assembly elections which had raised the number of states ruled by the party to 14.

The result of the latest assembly elections is unlikely to spur BJP to go for early parliamentary polls, which are due in September next year, if public statements of the party leadership are any indication.

Although Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had asked BJP MPs yesterday to get ready for parliamentary elections, other BJP leaders quickly moved in to nip in the bud possibility of interpreting his remarks as indicative of advancing the battle of ballots.

Political observers here say BJP needs quite sometime to put its organisation in order in the most crucial states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar which together have the largest number of parliamentary seats.