Day 1 of India Vote Called Less Violent Despite 6 Deaths
Battles with rocks, swords and bombs left six party activists dead Sunday in the first phase of India’s parliamentary election, a contest pitting the ruling Hindu nationalist coalition against opposition leader Sonia Gandhi.
Election Commissioner Manohar Singh Gill said, however, that the violence so far has been less severe than during previous elections.
He announced a fairly low 55% turnout Sunday in the first round of a five-part election for 543 seats in India’s lower house of Parliament. Over the next month, at least 600 million Indians are expected to vote in the world’s largest election--and India’s third in three years. Vote-counting begins Oct. 6. A new legislature and prime minister will take office in October.
The deaths of the six activists came despite efforts by about a million civil servants to ensure free and fair balloting conditions.
In the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, four people were killed when police fired rifles to disperse activists from Gandhi’s Congress Party and the Telugu Desam party. The activists were throwing bombs at each other outside a polling station in Cuddapah, about 200 miles south of Hyderabad, the state capital. In nearby Kamalapuram, authorities halted balloting after Congress Party supporters stabbed a Telegu Desam party worker, then killed him with a bomb as he fled.
In Amritsar, in the northern state of Punjab, a Congress Party member died after a dispute in a polling booth with the city’s mayor.
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