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Indian voters go to the polls

A polling official marks the finger of an Indian Kashmiri voter before she casts her vote at Sheeri village in the Baramulla district of Indian-administered Kashmir, yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

Indians braved attacks by separatists and communists as they started voting yesterday in parliamentary elections expected to return Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's governing coalition to power for another five years. At least 11 people were killed and 18 injured in the election-day violence.

The massive polls in the world's largest democracy, with more than 660 million registered voters, will be staggered in five phases over three weeks ending May 10, with vote-counting starting three days later.

Vajpayee's National Democratic Alliance headed into the elections with a booming economy likely to grow more than 8 percent this year and prospects for peace with nuclear rival Pakistan at their highest level in years.

A major issue for peace talks with Pakistan -- which were to resume after the elections -- is the two nations' conflicting claims to Kashmir, which is divided between them.

Militants opposed to India's control over portions of Kashmir were blamed for fatally shooting a paramilitary soldier guarding a polling station and a separate bomb attack in the region that wounded six civilians, including two poll workers.

Islamic militants say the elections legitimize what they see as India's occupation of the Himalayan region, and have threatened attacks on anyone participating in the polls.

A car filled with Indian journalists and human rights activists on their way to monitor polling stations exploded when it ran over a land mine in Kashmir. The driver and a human rights activist -- Asiya Geelani of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons -- were killed and four others were wounded.

More than 65,000 people have been killed and some 8,000 people have disappeared in Kashmir since an insurgency began in 1989 by Islamic militants fighting for the enclave's independence.

Maoist rebels also have ordered an election boycott in the isolated northeastern states of Jharkhand and Bihar.
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