The world's most populous democracy began deciding Wednesday whether Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi gets another chance to govern or falls victim to the most cohesive opposition challenge ever mounted in India.
At least 22 campaign workers and voters were killed in scattered bombings, knifings and shootings on the first day of the parliamentary election, which continues Friday and Sunday.As polls closed Wednesday reports of rising violence and ballot fraud mounted in Gandhi's own constituency of Amethi. Police, residents and both political parties reported several clashes between supporters of the Congress Party and the Janata Dal, the major partner in the opposition coalition.
More than 100,000 paramilitary troops were deployed across this nation of 880 million people to help local police stem campaign violence, which has killed at least 66 people since parliamentary elections were announced Oct. 17.
Preliminary reports indicated voter turnout of about 50 percent, a normal turnout.
Only 15 of India's 25 states and five of its seven federally governed territories voted Wednesday. The rest of the country, with the exception of Assam state, votes Friday and Sunday.
Voting was postponed indefinitely in Assam because electoral rolls were incomplete.
At stake in the elections are 524 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, or House of the People, the policymaking lower house of Parliament.
Opinion polls conducted this month for two major Indian news magazines indicated the Congress Party, haunted by allegations of high-level corruption, would get 180 to 215 of the seats. That would either doom it to defeat or force it to seek a difficult coalition with smaller parties.
In Uttar Pradesh, the state that elects 85 of the seats, opposition leaders charged the electoral roll did not contain the names of many 18-year-olds who are eligible to vote for the first time this year.
"It's a calculated step to prevent the young generation who are opposed to the Congress Party to cast ballots," Madhukar Dighe, spokesman for the opposition Janata Dal party, said in the state capital of Lucknow.
The health minister of western Gujarat state was fatally stabbed Tuesday night after addressing a Congress Party rally in Hatmatiana, 600 miles southwest of New Delhi. United News said a 21-year-old man was arrested.
Three bomb blasts rocked the Kashmir valley near the Pakistani frontier, where Moslem militants who want to secede from predominantly Hindu India have warned voters to boycott the election.