Indian Election: Third Wave Of Voting Begins

Indian Election: Third Wave Of Voting Begins

(NSI News Source Info) NEW DELHI, India - April 30, 2009: Polls have opened in the third round of India's month-long elections, with the residents of Mumbai, the site of last year's militant attacks, among 144 million registered to vote.

A Kashmiri woman walks past a paramilitary woman soldier at a closed market area in Srinagar, India, Thursday, April 30, 2009. Thousands of government forces in riot gear patrolled the main city in India's portion of Kashmir Thursday as voting began in the southern part of the disputed Himalayan region amid separatists' call for a strike and boycott of the polls.

Polling booths opened at 7:00am (0130 GMT), with voting in most districts set to end at 5:00pm. Among the nine states voting are parts of impoverished Bihar and populous Uttar Pradesh in the north, Gujarat in the west, the southern agricultural state of Karnataka, and leftist-dominated eastern West Bengal. The states are seen as key to the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party's bid to win power from the Congress-led ruling coalition. The BJP appears to trail its main rival in a staggered election that could produce a weak coalition government as India grapples with the global economic slowdown and a spate of militant attacks in the past year. The BJP will hope to get a big haul in the western state of Gujarat where one of the party's biggest stars, the controversial chief minister Narendra Modi, is a poster boy for the party's campaign of development and good governance. Security was tight, especially at polling stations in Bihar and West Bengal considered at risk from Maoist rebels who marred the first round of voting two weeks ago with a series of attacks that claimed nearly 20 lives. More than 19,000 paramilitary troops had been deployed to keep the peace. Ten parliamentary seats are up for grabs in India's financial and entertainment capital, Mumbai, which has seen an increase in political activism among its traditionally apathetic middle class since the November militant strikes that killed 166. The marathon, five-stage election - the world's largest democratic exercise - wraps up on May 13, with the final results expected three days later.