World's largest election opens
2004-04-20 08:15
New Delhi - Voting got underway in 13 Indian states and three federal territories on Tuesday, signalling the start of the world's largest election involving 670 million voters, 700 000 voting booths and two million poll officials.
Television channels showed voters heading to the polls in the 140 constituencies across India, including in the revolt-wracked northeast, where the first stage of the five-phased parliamentary poll was being rolled out.
But a correspondent in Indian Kashmir, where an Islamic insurgency has been raging since 1989, said polling stations, some of which had been attacked overnight by Islamic militants, were all but deserted early in the morning.
The election is so big that it is being held over five dates up to May 10 so that poll officers can spread out across the 543 constituencies where balloting is scheduled to take place.
In Tuesday's first phase, 175 million voters are eligible to choose from 1 103 candidates in the fray for the 140 seats up for grabs.
Opinion polls show that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's ruling Hindu nationalists are set to return to power on the back of good economic results when results are tallied on May 13.
Deputy Premier Lal Krishna Advani was among the first of the political heavyweights to cast his ballot, predictably forecasting a win for the National Democratic Alliance which has ruled India for the past five years after he voted in his Gandhinagar constituency in the western state of Gujarat.
Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha also cast his vote from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand state, from where he is seeking re-election.
The independent Election Commission has defined 66 000 voting stations in Kashmir and lawless Bihar state as "sensitive".
Police in Baramula district of northern Kashmir said on Tuesday seven polling booths had been raked overnight with gunfire or blasted with grenades in the two Kashmir constituencies where voting was taking place.
Three civilians and one security force member were injured in the attacks, which however caused little damage to the polling booths.
Police also reported that a member of the security forces died after militants threw a grenade near a polling station in Sopore on Monday evening. Ten other people were injured.
Election officials, meanwhile, have been issued with orders to shoot people trying to take over polling stations, known as "booth-capturing" in Bihar.
India's 14th general election since independence will be the first carried out on electronic voting machines in hopes of ending allegations of vote fraud.
Vajpayee chose to call the election five months ahead of schedule after a bountiful monsoon kicked the economy into high gear and with it his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which reversed a losing streak in December regional elections.
The opposition Congress party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, charges that India's growth last year was engineered by nature, not the BJP.
- AFP