A stunning electoral victory for the Indian National Congress in early elections called by the incumbent Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party, and a telling rejection of the social and economic conservatism of the BJP: the Congress emerged as the single largest party in the poll results announced today. The party, led by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, therefore appeared poised to form the country's next government with the likely support of its electoral allies and the country's Communist parties...the verdict represents a totally unexpected resurrection for the Congress Party of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, which governed India for 45 of the 57 years since independence but had floundered so badly in recent years that it was being written off as an historical relic... The implications for the direction of the country will take time to emerge. Some business leaders have expressed concern that a change in government could slow economic reforms, although it was Congress, under the finance minister at that time, Manmohan Singh, that initiated those reforms in 1991. The fate of peace with Pakistan — which had been predicated to an extent on the trust built in recent months between Mr. Vajpayee and the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and their aides — also hangs in the balance. The end of Hindu nationalist rule could bring other changes as well, such as the possibility of less culturally conservative policies in the face of the country's burgeoning AIDS crisis, and the end of efforts to introduce Hindu nationalist themes into educational curriculums. The resentment of the B.J.P. and its efforts to peddle the "feel-good factor" was almost palpable today among a small knot of working-class men gathered to watch the results on a news ticker in New Delhi. Many expressed dismay, common among Indians nostalgic for the quasi-socialist economy of India's first 40 years, at the economic reforms with which the B.J.P. had proudly identified itself. "Basically it is the anger of the working class," said Sawali Rai, 34, who works in a public sector bank. "Privatization, no government jobs, prices rising. On the pressure of the World Bank they are pressuring the common man."