India's Gandhi lagging behind hardliner Modi, poll shows

NEW DELHI (AFP) - India's ruling Congress party is headed for defeat in elections next year and barely one in five voters thinks Mr Rahul Gandhi, its likely candidate, would be the best prime minister, a poll suggested on Friday.

Mr Gandhi - whose father, grandmother and great-grandfather have all served as prime minister - is widely expected to lead Congress into the polls after being elevated to the post of party vice-president last weekend.

But only 22 per cent of voters surveyed by the magazine India Today said he would make the best prime minister - well behind the hardline Hindu nationalist politician Narendra Modi who had a 36-per cent rating.

The same poll showed the left-leaning Congress and its allies are on course to get 152-162 seats in the 552-seat Lok Sabha while the right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies were projected to get 198-208 seats.