Indian Kashmiris trickled into polling stations yesterday in the shadow of militant violence, in the latest stage of the nation’s five-week election that saw much higher turnout elsewhere in the country.
Millions cast ballots in the teeming financial capital, Mumbai, the home both of Bollywood and of sprawling slums, as well as in the electorally important southern state of Tamil Nadu.
The mammoth national election has been staggered in a bid to ensure the safety of the 814 million-strong electorate, with results due on May 16 when the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is forecast to take power.
Photo: AFP
The Muslim-majority and volatile Kashmir Valley, where a separatist movement against Indian rule is centered, posed a heightened challenge for security forces on the first of three days of polling there.
Voting was light to non-existent at heavily guarded polling stations in areas of Anantnag constituency after a campaign of intimidation by local militant groups, who killed three people this week and warned locals not to take part.
“I voted because if we send the right person to the Indian parliament he will raise our voice for azadi [freedom],” defiant resident Umair said, reflecting widespread separatist sentiment in the area.
In the town of Tral, 35km from the main city of Srinagar, the streets were empty except for paramilitary forces and police, with not a single vote cast at one polling station by noon.
Very few in the picturesque Himalayan valley, surrounded by towering snow-capped mountains, would be expected to support the election frontrunner, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a hardline Hindu nationalist who is leading campaigning for the BJP.
Modi remains a divisive figure after being accused of failing swiftly to curb anti-Muslim riots in his state in 2002. The unrest cost at least 1,000 lives.
The 63-year-old appeared before hundreds of thousands of cheering supporters yesterday as he filed his nomination papers to contest a seat from the holy Hindu city of Varanasi in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Dressed all in white, he was flanked by his controversial aide, Amit Shah, who was briefly banned from campaigning for inflammatory comments he made this month in an area hit by anti-Muslim riots last year. The streets were a sea of saffron, the BJP’s color which is associated with Hinduism, with the mainly male crowd decked out in BJP caps or carrying the party’s lotus emblem flags.
Modi, elected three times in Gujarat, has steered clear of advancing his party’s Hindu nationalist agenda on the campaign trail, presenting himself as a centrist economic reformer capable of delivering clean governance.
All polls show him as vastly more popular than his rival, Rahul Gandhi from the ruling Congress party, which has been in power for 10 years, but faces its heaviest ever defeat.
Millions of voters, from Bollywood stars and business leaders to slum dwellers, turned out to vote in the western megacity of Mumbai, standing in lines in a rare show of social mixing.
The city’s favorite son, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, voted early and urged others to follow suit.
“I have voted, have you? A wonderful start to my birthday, as a responsible citizen of our great nation,” the 41-year-old wrote on Twitter accompanied by a “selfie” of his inked finger.
At a school in the suburb of Juhu, popular with the middle-classes and Bollywood stars, the media jostled to get pictures of actors such as Dharmendra, Sonam Kapoor and Bobby Deol.
The Bollywood movie industry turned unusually political last week after more than 50 filmmakers, actors and writers, many of them Muslim, signed an appeal urging Indians not to vote for Modi and instead choose a “secular” party.
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