India starts marathon vote marred by Maoist attacks

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VARANASI, India, April 16 (Reuters): With Maoist insurgents stepping up attacks, Indians began voting in a month-long general election Thursday with signs an unstable coalition may emerge in the middle of an economic slowdown.
The ruling Congress party-led coalition appears to lead against an alliance headed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but both may need the support of a host of smaller and unpredictable regional parties to win office.
The fear among investors is that the world's largest democratic exercise involving 714 million voters and hundreds of parties will lead to the rise of a "Third Front" government of communist and regional groups.
The uncertain vote comes as a once-booming India reels from a crunch that has cost millions of jobs. It has ignited fears of political limbo just as India balances needs to help millions of poor with worries over its biggest fiscal gap in two decades.
Highlighting growing militant threats, Maoists killed five election officials in a land mine blast in Chhattisgarh state. Ten police were killed in other attacks across India's central and eastern "red belt" where Thursday's election was centered.
The government has deployed hundreds of thousands of police to protect more than 140 million people who can vote Thursday in polls that cover some of India's poorest states hit by the four-decade old Maoist insurgency.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described Maoist violence as India's biggest internal security threat and 500 civilians and police were killed in insurgent clashes last year.
The outcome of the five-stage election will be known on May 16. India's elections are notoriously hard to predict and polls have been wrong in the past. Exit polls are banned.
A clear win by either of the two main parties could see a rally on India's markets, but the emergence of a weak coalition of regional and communist parties could see stocks fall by as much as 30 per cent, market watchers say.
Thursday's election ranged from the snowbound Chinese border to holy towns on the Ganges River.
Some election officials rode elephants to remote polling stations near the Myanmar border. Other ballots were brought by two-day sea trips to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
In Varanasi, the northern sacred city on the Ganges River known for its Hindu gurus, many voters arrived on bicycles and bullock carts to cast electronic votes.