A third wave of voters joined India’s marathon general election yesterday, with security ramped up as the staggered polls moved to the volatile Kashmir Valley and the financial capital Mumbai.
Indian police and paramilitary forces imposed a lockdown on Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar after two days of violent anti-poll protests and placed key separatist leaders under house arrest.
Nearly 145 million people are eligible to vote in phrase three of the staggered, five-stage national ballot, which is widely expected to result in a shaky coalition government that will have to steer the country through an economic slump.
In Kashmir, all eyes were on the number of voters. A strong turnout would deal a blow to separatist groups, who have called for a poll boycott to reinforce opposition to Indian rule in the Muslim-majority region.
“I am voting for development. Separatists need to delink elections from the struggle for freedom,” said Kashmir businessman Iqbal Dar, 49, who cast an early ballot.
Voters were also out in India’s financial and entertainment capital, Mumbai, which has witnessed an increase in “white collar” political activism since the Islamist militant attacks in November that killed 166 people.
Anger at India’s leaders for failing to prevent the carnage has led independent candidates to stand and stirred Mumbai’s traditionally apathetic educated, middle class.
Sriram Lakshmi, 23, an investment banker with ING, said concern over terrorism had galvanized his circle of friends.
“I think every person in this area has been affected personally,” said Lakshmi who lives a stone’s throw from Nariman House, where the offices of the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish movement were seized by gunmen during the attack.
“And they are going to start making their voice heard. If they don’t, they don’t deserve to criticize the government,” Lakshmi said.
But national security is not a priority issue everywhere, with the bulk of India’s 714 million electorate likely to vote on purely local issues or according to their caste and religion.
Among other states voting yesterday were parts of impoverished Bihar and populous Uttar Pradesh in the north, Gujarat in the west, the southern rural state of Karnataka and leftist-dominated eastern West Bengal.
Smaller, regional parties are expected to play a key role, after securing nearly 50 percent of the vote in 2004 and forcing the ruling Congress party into a coalition with an alphabet soup of local parties.
The monthlong ballot — the world’s largest democratic exercise — wraps up on May 13, with the final results expected three days later.
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