NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said on Tuesday it had started talks with individual lawmakers and small groups to pull together a majority in parliament. The BJP and its allies, although by far and away the largest grouping as counting of election votes neared an end, were almost certain to fall short of the majority 272 seats required to form a government. But BJP leaders said if anyone had got a mandate to rule, it was them. "Maximum mandate is for the BJP," party spokesman Venkaiah Naidu told a packed news conference, launching a bitter attack against the communists in the United Front coalition for trying to block it. By early evening on Tuesday the BJP and its allies had won 233 lower house of parliament seats and were ahead in 17 other constituencies, while the Congress and its support groups had taken 165 seats and led in another seven. The multi-party United Front, whose minority government fell in December after Congress withdrew its support, had won 94 seats and were ahead in four others. Independents and small parties looked set to take 20 seats. "We are in touch with like-minded people outside the BJP alliance," Naidu said. "There are certain parties, individuals who do no want to support Congress under any circumstances." But the BJP's ire was raised by statements from communist party leaders that they would seek to rekindle the United Front and Congress partnership. "They are trying to forge yet another illegitimate government," Naidu said, referring to a comment by Harkishen Singh Surjeet, head of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), that the left would seek to set up a non-BJP government. The United Front, which includes communists, regional and caste-based parties, took power after a fractured verdict in 1996 elections, with the Congress providing support from the sidelines. The two formations fell out last November over a probe report into the 1991 assassination of former premier Rajiv Gandhi, forcing a mid-term poll. "That front was an affront to the mandate of 1996 and the voters have rejected it lock, stock and barrel," Naidu said, adding that the BJP's rivals were trying for an encore.