NEW DELHI - The victory of the Congress party in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections has made a lot of things simpler for the country and those at the helm of affairs, feel editorials of leading English dailies in the country.

‘The Congress holds all aces. The prime ministership will not be up for bargaining, as some of the smaller players were hoping. For President Pratibha Patil, the task on hand couldn’t be simpler: there is no need to consult constitutional experts to decide on whom to invite to form the next government,’ an editorial in The Hindu said Sunday.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) campaign was criticized by some of the newspapers.

‘For, anybody who built a campaign on negativism, prejudice, victimhood and vengeance has been demolished,’ the Indian Express edit said.

BJP’s Prime Minister-in-waiting L.K. Advani’s ambition is likely to remain unrealized, different editorials have pointed out about the 81-year-old leader.

The Hindustan Times front-page edit said: ‘If the mandate of elections 2009 tells us something loud and clear, it is: governance pays… India’s voters believe Mr (Manmohan) Singh’s government is the right one to take India forward in these unsteady times. It is now up to the new unfettered, unhindered UPA government to show what it can do with our future.’

While the edits were nearly uniform in saying that the vote in favour of the Manmohan Singh government was decisive, the Left parties came in for some special treatment from all newspapers.

The Tribune’s front page editorial said: ‘A strange kind of hubris and the self-rectitude that have marked the Left policy and campaign led to an attitude that did not allow it to see how much ground had slipped from under its feet, despite the fact that one-third of the countrymen are living in poverty and the jobless are growing in numbers by the day. Despite eight decades of existence and an impressive record of historic blunders, Mr Prakash Karat and his comrades, who perhaps will stay with him because of habit, are left with no choice but to lick their wounds waiting with eternal hope for the revolution they learnt about in textbooks of little relevance to the 21st century India.’

The Times of India’s front-page editorial said that the electorate had reposed ‘their faith in the Congress, the Gandhis and Manmohan Singh’.

‘Manmohan Singh returns to office largely unencumbered by the demands and conditions that his UPA partners have placed on him, leading to compromises that weren’t in the best interest of the nation.

‘There is an amazing grace and beauty about the way India goes to elections every five years,’ the Times edit said complimenting the Indian democracy and its unexpected results.