NEW DELHI, 20 April 2004 — The dark shadow of violence loomed as tens of thousands of election officials backed by soldiers took up positions across India yesterday, ahead of the start of a parliamentary election in the world’s biggest democracy.

Voting begins today in the first stage of a mammoth exercise involving over 670 million voters, who are expected to give the ruling coalition a new five-year term.

Millions of Indians are expected to turn out for today’s voting, despite the threat of violence in parts of the country.

Opinion polls have predicted a clear win for Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition, but a new survey said main challenger Congress had narrowed the gap.

Vajpayee’s BJP has dropped its hard-line Hindu agenda, and is campaigning on a feel-good platform of strong economic growth, governance and peace prospects with Pakistan.

But the main opposition Congress led by the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi says the BJP, which it has long accused of a deep-seated bias against the nation’s 120 million Muslims, remains a threat to the country’s secular character.

“The BJP and its allies have built walls between communities, they have divided up our society. Whoever does this is betraying the country,” Sonia said at a campaign rally in a far-flung suburb of the financial capital, Bombay. The BJP denies any prejudice but says it is opposed to the appeasement of any community. “We urge voters to give us a strong mandate. We have an able leadership, our government has performed well,” Law Minister Arun Jaitley told a news conference in New Delhi.

Indian shares slipped more than one percent ahead of polling day, as cautious investors worried about the strength of the government’s mandate to carry out market-friendly reforms. India’s financial markets have soared in the last year on the back of reforms and a strong economy, with the rupee at a four-year high. Analysts say markets are hoping for a convincing victory for the BJP-led coalition, which will enable them to push reforms through more aggressively.

In latest polls, India Today magazine said the BJP-led coalition would likely take 282 seats in the 545-member lower house of Parliament, more than the half required to rule but far less than 335 seats that the magazine predicted in its first survey in January.

Other polls in the last week have given the BJP-led coalition between 276 and 278 seats, but one poll by The Week magazine gave them just 248 — far below a majority. But even if the coalition fails to get a majority, analysts say it will still emerge as the largest group and probably be able to attract smaller parties to form a government.

Voting in the first stage will take place in 13 of 29 states — including Kashmir and the western state of Gujarat where tensions between Hindus and minority Muslims remains high, two years after the country’s worst religious bloodletting in a decade.

The independent Election Commission said it had taken adequate precautions.

“All arrangements are in place, voters are urged to exercise their franchise freely and without any fear,” it said in a statement.

Indian forces killed three militants — believed to be planning attacks to disrupt the election — just as they crossed the Kashmir frontier from Pakistan overnight, the army said.

Militants have carried out a series of attacks in Kashmir ahead of the election, killing 11 people and wounding more than 60 others in a grenade attack on a campaign rally on April 8. Officials also ordered air surveillance over the eastern states of Jharkhand and Bihar where outlawed radical leftists have threatened to kill anyone coming out to vote.

Leftist guerrillas set off a land mine in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh on Sunday night, wounding a leader of a regional group backing the federal coalition. Polling will take place on four more days ending on May 10 to allow security forces to move across the vast nation to ensure a free and fair vote. Counting of votes is scheduled for May 13 and results are expected the same day.