AT LEAST seven people, including a policeman, were killed during the second round of polling in India's general elections yesterday. The turnout was 55 per cent.
Despite heavy security in the 204 constituencies where polling took place, rival political gangs exchanged gunfire in the eastern state of Bihar, killing at least six people.
Further south, in And bra Pradesh state, home of the Prime Minister, Mr Narasimha Rao, a mine explosion killed one policeman, raising to 50 the number of people who have died in violence during the first two rounds of voting.
The Election Commission has ordered a new vote in some 450 polling stations after ballot papers were either deliberately damaged or snatched and stuffed into ballot boxes last week. The third and final round of voting for 191 Lok Sabha (lower house) seats, is on Tuesday next.
Yesterday's voting will decide the electoral fortunes of several leaders, among them Mr Rao and Mr Atal Behari Vajapayee of the opposition Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), widely tipped as next prime minister.
Yesterday's poll will also determine whether Mr Ramesh Vare - a eunuch, who prefers to be known as Mala will become an MP. One of a number of colourful candidates in the western state of Maharashtra, he has been causing problems for Mr Rajesh Tope, the formidable candidate for the ruling Congress-I party.
Mala has been following Mr Tope's campaign trail in Jalna, 300 miles north of Bombay, and attracting larger crowds. But he admits the crowds come to see him out of curiosity, particularly since his speeches are raunchy and ribald compared with to Mr Tope's bland political rhetoric.
"Try me now that women and men have failed you", is his one line appeal to voters, which he delivers with a suggestive swing of his hips, swirling the sari draped around his body. If elected, he promises to establish an army of eunuchs as well as to introduce a specially sensitive brand of affirmative action for them.
A former corporal, Mr P.S. Aserkar (70), is more serious about his 43rd attempt at becoming an MP for Bombay South. "I stand as a matter of protest," he said, "as politicians do not represent common people like me." He feels this election is the perfect time for independents like him to participate as most voters are fed up with established, non performing politicians.
Mr Shoorje Surty, a member of Bombay's minority Parsee community, a practitioner of alternative medicine and an independent candidate in South. Central Bombay, promises to change India's education system if elected. He says he will open a college of alternative medicine where science can be taught in regional languages and where no stigma will be attached to students not knowing English, the language of upward mobility in India.
