India, the world's largest democracy, will go to early polls in four stages from April 20 to May 10 in an election expected to return the ruling Hindu nationalist-led coalition to power.
Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy told reporters yesterday that counting and results were due on May 13.
He appealed for peaceful and fair campaigning by parties in what is traditionally a boisterous and sometimes volatile exercise, but which this year for the first time bars candidates with a criminal record.
"We do not want the election to be conducted on the basis of violence and personal attacks," Krishnamurthy said. "I would appeal to them to ... avoid unnecessary violence and criminal activities."
Many candidates in previous polls had, and sometimes boasted of, hundreds of convictions and some contested from jail.
Opinion polls show Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition winning another five-year term, helped by one of the world's fastest-growing economies and prospects of peace with nuclear rival Pakistan.
More than 670 million Indians aged 18 and above are eligible to vote in the national elections, which will be held along with state polls in Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Karnataka.
Analysts said the polls would differ sharply from previous elections because, for the first time, young people aged between 18 and 35 would form nearly 60 percent of the total electorate.
"These are turning point elections because of the demographic change from old to young voters," said N. Bhaskar Rao, a poll expert and political analyst. "So India is not going to be shackled by its older population.
"The second reason is that there is a realignment of ideologies taking place in Indian politics," Rao added.
"Political parties have become more inclusive and the old divide between the left- and the right-wing, on which elections were fought in the past don't, by and large, exist anymore."
More than 1 million electronic voting machines will be used for the nation's first fully electronic national election and hundreds of thousands of police and soldiers will be deployed.
The sheer size of the exercise means voting has to be held in phases to allow time to move electoral officials and security forces around the vast country.
The second round of voting will be on April 26 and the third on May 5, Krishnamurthy said.
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