Indian hardliner Modi faces popularity test in state polls

BIJAPUR: Voters defied threats from India's Maoist rebels on Monday to turn out for the first of five state elections that will test the popularity of opposition leader Narendra Modi before national polls next year.

Chhattisgarh state, a resource-rich hotbed of left-wing extremism, was under tight security for the first of two phases of voting in which the national opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is seeking a third term in power.

Modi, a hardline Hindu nationalist, has campaigned in Chhattisgarh and is hoping a string of contests over the next month will boost his momentum and favourable ratings over his national rival Rahul Gandhi.

Gandhi, the 41-year-old scion of his family's political dynasty, trails in the polls and is struggling to fire up his Congress party which has been in power since 2004 at national level.

Parliamentary elections in the world's biggest democracy must be held before May, with Congress battered by a mix of high inflation, slowing economic growth and a series of corruption scandals.

Maoists have called for a boycott of the state polls in Chhattisgarh and have been intimidating voters in remote rural areas, police say, where the local mostly tribal population is caught in a vicious cycle of violence.

In the restive district of Bastar, long queues of voters formed outside polling stations which opened at 7 am.

"I am voting for peace in this region," first-time voter Vikash Kashyap told AFP.

Maoists seeking the overthrow of the government are active in forest strongholds across a swathe of central and eastern India.

After Chhattisgarh, voters in central Madhya Pradesh, western Rajasthan, northeastern Mizoram and New Delhi will also vote for new state assemblies.

All results will be published simultaneously after counting on December 8.

Modi, chief minister of the western state of Gujarat since 2001, was named as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate in September, despite qualms by some colleagues about his hardline politics and links to deadly religious riots.

He was in power in Gujarat in 2002 when at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in some of post-independence India's worst rioting.