Indians vote on key election day

Voters went to the polls in New Delhi on the first major day of India's marathon national election Thursday, with the capital a key battleground for a new anti-corruption party which shot to fame last year. Almost a fifth of the parliament's 543 seats are up for grabs on Thursday, the third of nine phases of voting in the world's biggest election that will end when results are published on May 16. As well as the capital and its 17-million residents, ballots were cast in densely populated rural constituencies in northern India where the Hindu nationalist frontrunner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is expected to poll strongly. But Thursday was of particular importance for the 18-month-old anti-corruption Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which triumphed in the Delhi state election last December and is now contesting more than 400 parliamentary seats nationally, according to AFP.