Indians to Vote for New Parliament : Asia: Monthlong process is third election in three years. Campaign has focused on personal rather than national issues.

Indians will begin casting ballots Sunday in a vote for a new Parliament, after a campaign almost bereft of debate that focused on the ancestry of a candidate for prime minister, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi.

At least 605 million Indians are eligible to vote in the staggered poll, which will take a month to complete. On Sunday, the first of five voting days, 140 million voters may cast ballots for 146 parliamentary seats, beginning the third election in three years in the world’s largest democracy.

About 4.5 million civil servants will staff 800,000 polling stations, protected by up to 1 million police and paramilitary forces.

Past elections in India have been marked by violence, and at least half a dozen people already have been killed in advance of this election. A mob pelted one candidate with stones, and another was stabbed 15 times in his home.

Although nearly half of India’s population lives in poverty, the issues of development, unemployment, illiteracy, health care and clean water were hardly raised during the campaign.

“A billion Indians deserve a better debate,” Chief Election Commissioner Manohar Singh Gill said.

The ruling Hindu nationalist coalition has attacked Gandhi, widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and leader of the opposition Congress Party, saying she is a political novice and unfit to become prime minister because she was born in Italy. Defense Minister George Fernandes said Gandhi’s only contribution to India was to add two children to its burgeoning population.

Members of Gandhi’s party countered by insinuating that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, a 74-year-old bachelor, has a predilection for wine and women.

Vajpayee, whose 13-month tenure was marked by India’s first series of underground nuclear explosions, was defeated by a single vote in a parliamentary confidence vote April 17.

After the vote, however, none of the opposition parties that banded together to topple his coalition could muster a new government. Since then, Vajpayee has gained strength and appears set to lead his party to a decisive victory in the race for seats in the 543-member lower house of Parliament.

The premier has been boosted by the army’s eviction of Pakistan-based fighters from India’s portion of northern Kashmir.

The voting is staggered to help maintain security across the country. Ballot boxes will be delivered on the backs of elephants in the northeastern jungles, on camels in the western deserts of Rajasthan, and on boats in the flooded plains of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.