India’s Ruling Party Crisis Deepens; Prime Minister’s Ouster Expected : Asia: Parliament will vote Wednesday. What sort of government will take over is unclear.

India’s political crisis deepened Monday as Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s ruling party split over his handling of two key issues that together touched off waves of religious clashes and suicide protests in which hundreds have died in recent weeks.

After a day of politicking and back-room meetings, the ruling Janata Dal (People’s Party) appeared as divided as the rest of India on Singh’s decision to forcibly block Hindu militants’ attempts to replace an ancient Muslim mosque with a temple to the god Rama, as well as Singh’s edict last summer to reserve 20% of all government jobs for low-caste Hindus.

The split virtually ensures Singh’s fall from power on Wednesday, when the Indian Parliament is scheduled to convene for a no-confidence vote on the prime minister’s performance.

But what sort of government will replace Singh’s socialist-led coalition remains uncertain at a time that Singh has conceded is India’s most trying hour since independence in 1947.

The dissident faction of the People’s Party, which has ruled for 11 months through a coalition with the Hindu fundamentalists and India’s Communist parties, unanimously elected veteran socialist Chandra Shekhar as its leader Monday. The faction claimed to have support in 68 of the party’s 140 parliamentary seats.

Shekhar has proven himself a perennial political opportunist since he broke ranks with the Nehru family’s once-monolithic Congress-I party in 1974. And on Monday, he made clear his intentions to replace Singh as prime minister through a coalition with any group willing to support him.

“Today, I am not the prime minister of this country. When I am prime minister, I will answer every question,” Shekhar shouted during a news conference in the back yard of Singh’s former deputy prime minister, Devi Lal, who helped convene the splinter faction.

At the same time that Shekhar’s group met, though, Singh convened the remainder of his party in a parliamentary annex building, where they unanimously elected Singh to continue as party president.

Singh’s faction claimed the support of 83 of the 140 party members. No one could explain the mathematical discrepancy in the two factions’ claims.

Singh himself left the official party meeting hurriedly and offered no comment on the day’s feverish and often convoluted politicking. Later, however, he announced the formal expulsion of Shekhar and 24 other party members for “anti-party activities.”

In a briefing for journalists after Singh’s faction met, Railways Minister George Fernandes at first asserted that the party had not broken apart.

“The Janata Dal has not split,” he said with a smile. “Some people did not attend the meeting, that’s all.”

Later, though, he conceded that the party is “under attack, under siege” from within, adding, “I suppose that’s a part of political life.”

Fernandes and other Cabinet ministers still loyal to Singh insisted that whatever the makeup of the future government, it will not be decided before Wednesday.

Asked how Singh’s government can survive the parliamentary vote now that his own party is divided, Fernandes concluded: “Sometimes a party which loses some of its members becomes more cohesive--and therefore strong. All possibilities are still open as far as Parliament is concerned. . . . In politics, there is no such word as impossible.”

But even if the ruling party remains united, Singh more than likely will lose Wednesday’s vote because it has ruled only through the contradictory Hindu-Communist coalition--and last week he lost the key support of the Hindu revivalist Indian People’s Party, whose entire leadership was arrested while trying to join in the destruction of the mosque in the holy city of Ayodhya.

Singh ordered the release of the fundamentalist party’s leaders so they, too, could meet in New Delhi on Monday to prepare for the upcoming session. Predictably, the Hindu party called for new national elections, which it hopes to win on the strength of its mosque-destruction crusade.

Most of the 200 people killed in nationwide rioting last week after Hindu militants began destroying the mosque were Muslims attacked by frenzied mobs of celebrating Hindus. If new elections are held, Singh hopes to win backing from the Muslims, who number 100 million to the Hindus’ 750 million but consistently vote in a bloc.

Singh also would rely on the support of India’s millions of low-caste Hindus, who will benefit by his so-called positive discrimination order to break India’s caste system. The order has been blamed for nearly 200 suicide attempts--half of them successful--by high-caste students and young government officials who despair of their professional future.

The Hindu fundamentalist party, however, has mobilized a new political force through its campaign to build the temple to Rama, among the most popular of Hinduism’s gods and mythical heroes. Its leaders are banking on a new “Hindu vote” to bring them to power for the first time if elections are held soon.

The final decision on elections is likely to be made by Indian President Ramaswami Venkataraman, a 79-year-old former congressman who serves as political referee in such crises.

If Singh loses the confidence vote, the president can call on Shekhar to form a coalition with other parties--even the Congress-I, which holds about 190 seats in Parliament and is still led by former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

In fact, many analysts speculated that the president can even call on Gandhi himself--who presided over his party’s worst defeat in three generations--to form a new government or serve as a caretaker prime minister for up to six months before scheduling new elections.

Whatever the outcome, Gandhi is likely to play a key role.