The first of several rounds of voting in India's general elections ended yesterday with about 50 per cent of 160 million registered voters braving soaring temperatures to visit polling stations across the country.
Subhash Pani, spokesman for the Election Commission in New Delhi, said voting might have to be held again in 45 polling stations - a majority in Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao's southern home state of Andhra Pradesh - after reports of violence and attempts at ballot-rigging.
He said the voter turnout of about 48 per cent in New Delhi and the neighbouring state of Rajasthan was the lowest while the states of Kerala in the south and Assam in the northeast recorded the highest, averaging 68 per cent.
Mr Rao is fighting for political survival and his five-year-old market reforms.
Ranged against him are the largest opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the centrist Janata Dal-Left Front alliance.
Opinion polls have predicted a hung parliament with the BJP as the single largest party, followed by Mr Rao's Congress (I) Party and the Janata Dal-Left Front.
No party is expected to win a majority 270 seats needed to form a government.
