India Leader Reported Ready to Call New Vote Over Strife

Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh will call an election over bitter religious and caste issues dividing India, senior officials of his Janata Dal party said Wednesday as tensions rose across the nation.

At least 20 people were killed and many injured in religious violence after a Hindu revivalist party called a general strike in India to protest the arrest of its leader.

Janata Dal officials said Singh is confident of winning elections likely to be held towards the end of December, little more than a year after he took power at the head of a minority government supported by a right-wing Hindu party and leftist groups.

Singh said President Ramaswami Venkataraman agreed to call a special session of Parliament in early November for a vote of confidence after the Hindu revivalist group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), withdrew its support from the minority government.

The officials said Singh would call elections whether he wins or loses the confidence vote, convinced that there is no possibility of reconciliation with the BJP.

The BJP withdrew its support Tuesday after authorities arrested party leader Lal Krisha Advani to halt his march to Ayodhya, about 300 miles southeast of New Delhi, where he had vowed to build a temple on land occupied by a 16th-Century mosque.