In a burst of campaigning ahead of Monday's vote, the Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has unleashed an advertising blitz selling a message of prosperity and stability and attacking the opposition Congress party as opportunists.

Alarmed after exit polls showed his alliance unlikely to win a majority, Vajpayee and 25 others top leaders will also sell the message at rallies across 16 states ahead of Monday's vote for 182 seats in the 545-member lower house.

"There is no panic. Our feedback is that we will get a clear mandate," said BJP spokesman Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. "Nobody wants an instability, it will hurt everyone."

The opposition begged to differ.

"May 10 is a non-BJP day, where elections are taking place is not their territory," said Jairam Ramesh, a Congress poll strategist.

Monday's vote will be the toughest by far for the BJP.

The fifth round of the three-week long election is concentrated in southern Tamil Nadu state and the communist bastion of West Bengal, both large states where the BJP has little presence and is dependent on regional partners.

Yesterday, Vajpayee flew to the bellwether state of Uttar Pradesh, the nation's most populous, to address rallies, while his hardline deputy, Lal Krishna Advani, went to Tamil Nadu to cement support there for the BJP's regional partner.

Congress leader Sonia Gandhi is also in Tamil Nadu.

In West Bengal, where the communists have run the world's longest-running elected government for more than a quarter of a century, red flags flew from mud houses across the state.

The communists, who are not officially allied to Congress but would probably join them in opposing the BJP, have mocked the ruling coalition's feel-good campaign of peace and prosperity.

One wall painting made by communist supporters in the state capital Calcutta depicted Vajpayee dressed up as a soccer player kicking a common man and telling him to feel good while jobs were being axed.

"The fifth phase is a crucial phase. The NDA will perform miserably," West Bengal Chief Minister Buddadeb Bhattacharjee told hundreds of cheering supporters in Calcutta's blistering heat, referring to the ruling coalition.

Counting for all votes will be on May 13, with a result expected the same day.

Exit polls have predicted Vajpayee and his partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) would win between 245 and 282 seats in parliament, with 273 needed for a majority. The BJP is expected to win the largest number of seats, giving it the first opportunity to form government.

Vinod Mehta, editor of the weekly Outlook magazine, said he expected Vajpayee to "scrape through" and get another term. "But exit polls in India are such an inexact science, I don't know how much reliance to put on them," he said.

"Congress leaders who I have met in the last three or four days seem to be exuding confidence -- this is not just bravado -- and they feel the NDA will not get a majority."

A survey by NDTV-Indian Express said the coalition would have to win more than half the 182 seats voting on Monday to get a clear majority. The coalition won 82 of these seats in the last election five years ago.