Even a backward constituency like Bellary, which saw a keen tussle between Sonia Gandhi and Sushma Swaraj, the issue was of `swadeshi vs videshi' rather than district development.

``Personalities have always played an important part in Indian elections, but this time there was an unduly strong clash between opposing personalities,'' points out media analyst Pran Chopra.

It was I & B Minister Pramod Mahajan's supposed comparison of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi with Monica Lewinsky -- a charge he denied and blamed on imaginative journalism and the Congress -- that brought the muck-raking in this year's elections into national gaze. From then on, the campaign of personal vilification assumed alarming proportions, both sides going for the jugular. Congress spokesman Kapil Sibal describedthe PM as a ``habitual liar'' who was ``not only sleeping when the enemy came but also actively connived and consorted with them.''