India deploys thousands of cops for election

Indian security personnel escort election officials transporting Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) on elephants leaving to polling stations of the Guwahati constituency on the eve of national elections in Nortap, Assam state yesterday. India's 14th general election since independence will be the first carried out only on electronic voting machines, in hopes of ending widespread irregularities -- and also the need for 7,700 tonnes of paper. PHOTO: AFP

Police said prominent regional politician Yerran Naidu survived a midnight landmine ambush in southern Andhra Pradesh state while outgoing Textile Minister Sahnawaz Hussain said assailants tried to run him down overnight in adjoining Bihar.

In other pre-poll violence, Sushil Modi, president of the Bihar chapter of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), survived an attack Sunday by unidentified men in the state capital of Patna.

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Police also reported that federal election officials travelling to a Bihar constituency had a miraculous escape Monday when three landmines planted by Maoist rebels blew up before their bus drove into the ambush, police said.

Tuesday's voting is scheduled to be held in 140 of the 543 federal seats up for grabs, with elections to the remaining seats staggered over four dates until May 10.

In all, some two million federal militia and state policemen are being deployed for the world's largest exercise in democracy, an election commission official said.

India's interior ministry said it had deployed paramilitary forces to 11 of the 15 states where Islamic, Maoist and tribal guerrillas have issued separate calls to boycott the parliamentary elections, the fourth since 1996.

A ministry spokesman said special attention was being paid to states such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Mizoram and Indian Kashmir where various insurgent groups are opposed to the polls.

"The entire exercise will involve over 1,300 companies (130,000 personnel), all taken together," he said, without giving numbers of those involved in Tuesday's first phase.

He said thousands of security personnel have been sent to Kashmir, where Islamic militancy has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1989, to reinforce police during Tuesday's balloting in two of the region's six seats.