India starts marathon vote, weak coalition seen

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(Agendcies)
Updated: 2009-04-17 10:33

Array of Castes

Thursday's election ranged from the snowbound Chinese border to holy towns on the Ganges River.

Some election officials rode elephants to remote polling stations near the Myanmar border. Other ballots were brought by two-day sea trips to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.

India starts marathon vote, weak coalition seen

Voters stand in queue to cast their vote outside a booth at a polling station in Rohania, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, April 16, 2009. [Agencies]

In Varanasi, the northern sacred city on the Ganges River known for its Hindu gurus, many voters arrived on bicycles and bullock carts to cast electronic votes.

Women in saris or burqas, many carrying children, pressed buttons with pictorial symbols of each party, after their fingers were marked with ink to avoid fraud.

"India needs many things like jobs for people, homes, water, roads but what is needed first is a stable government", said Sanjay Singh, a college student and a first-time voter.

Ancient caste, religious and ethnic ties will play a huge role in the vote as well as national problems like the slowdown, security fears and local issues from the building of a village water pump to problems of wild elephants trampling on villagers.

The centre-left Congress party is wooing voters with populist measures such as food subsidies in a country were hundreds of millions live below the poverty line.

Singh is Congress's official candidate. But Rahul Gandhi, the 38-year-old scion of India's most powerful family dynasty, has become one of the party's main election cards, criss-crossing the nation in helicopter.

The BJP accuses its main rival of poor governance and being weak on security, after a string of militant attacks last year culminated in a rampage in Mumbai by Islamist gunmen that killed 166 people and escalated tensions with nuclear-armed Pakistan.

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