“I do not feel safe in my own country and home; I do not sleep when my children are out at night,” said Satyaprakash, 51. “Whichever government comes to power next, they must make a change in our security process, visas, travel and checks.”
Her polling place, in a housing compound for railway officers, is 200 meters (656 feet) from the seaside where 10 Pakistani terrorists came ashore in inflatable dinghies on Nov. 26 in an attack that left 166 dead.
The ease with which the militants besieged luxury hotels, a railway station, a hospital and a Jewish community center over 2 1/2 days has made terrorism the main concern of voters -- and of officials charged with voter-and-candidate protection. The month-long elections are taking place under the tightest safety procedures in India’s six decades of democracy.
The country’s enforcement failings were underscored as Maoist rebels killed 19 people, mostly police and military, during the first round of voting on April 16 and took 500 train passengers hostage on April 22, the eve of the second round.
The rebels are active in a dozen Indian states, straining security services that also have to contend with separatists in the northeast of the country and militants in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir who have mounted an armed campaign since 1989.
Automatic Weapons
About 2.1 million security workers, including paramilitary forces armed with automatic weapons, will be deployed in this nation of 1.1 billion people to safeguard voting taking place on five days over a period of a month. The country lacks enough trained manpower for a one-day, nationwide election.
A poll by media company Aaj Tak/India Today Group showed 39 percent of respondents said terrorism was the country’s worst problem, more than twice those who chose the economic slowdown. No dates or number of people questioned were given.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government scrapped anti- terror laws that allowed suspects to be held for 180 days without charge five years ago, drawing claims from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party that the ruling Congress party wasn’t doing enough to prevent extremism.
Federal Bureau
Singh, 76, told an election rally in Maharashtra state on April 21 that his government is working to avoid a repeat of the Mumbai attacks while ensuring that no religious group is subject to harassment. Lal Krishna Advani, leader of the Hindu- nationalist BJP, called on April 5 for a judicial inquiry into the government’s handling of the assault.
In the aftermath of the attacks, the BJP ran newspaper advertisements showing blood splattered on a wall and proclaiming “Weak Government.”
The BJP’s campaign platform calls for “zero tolerance” of terrorism, while Congress says its “forceful diplomatic campaign” led Pakistan to admit its citizens were responsible for the Mumbai attacks.
Security for top politicians, including Congress President Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi and Advani, has been stepped up. Additional policemen have been deployed in the towns and villages where they hold rallies, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a televised address on April 2.
The move follows intelligence that the party leaders would be the target of militant attacks during the parliamentary elections that end May 13, the Home Ministry said.
Targeting Rallies?
Militants from Kashmir may send suicide bombers to target campaign rallies, Walter Andersen, a retired U.S. State Department India specialist, said in a telephone interview.
“It is a logical step and there should be an attempt to protect major candidates,” said Andersen, who heads the South Asia Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies in Washington. “The government doesn’t want a prominent politician to be killed.”
Even before voting, candidates campaigned under unprecedented security. At a rally this month, supporters of Advani, 81, sat 60 meters from his podium in Chitradurga, a southern Indian town with no history of terrorism.
Advani’s helicopter flew with commandos from the National Security Guards, the combined police-military force that ended the Mumbai siege, to the 91-percent Hindu town. “It took three days to sanitize the ground,” Deputy Superintendent of Police, C.B. Patil, said at the site. “There are threat perceptions.”
Wooden Barricades
The podium was cordoned off by two chest-high wooden barricades as armed policemen patrolled the no-access zone in- between. About 450 policemen conducted random checks, erected barricades on the streets and frisked BJP supporters. Attendees went through fixed metal detectors and, once inside, were checked again by policemen with hand-held wands. Police and paramilitaries armed with AK-47 rifles ringed the ground.
Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, husband of Sonia Gandhi, was assassinated by suicide bombers during an election rally in southern Tamil Nadu state’s Sriperumbudur town on May 21, 1991. India blamed the killing on Sri Lanka’s militant group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
“The security threat in India will be high during the elections,” said Reva Bhalla, South Asia analyst for Austin, Texas-based global intelligence company Stratfor, in an e-mail. Another attack on urban India is “inevitable,” though it is unclear if it would take place during elections when forces will be on high alert, Bhalla said.
The Election Commission, an independent body charged with the conduct of the elections, has set up 828,804 polling stations to elect 543 lawmakers to the Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament. About 714 million voters are scheduled to elect a government for a five-year term.
In Mumbai, voter Satyaprakash said she was concerned the security rules were relaxed because she had seen people without proper identification entering her residential compound, where voting was to take place.
“They need to learn from their mistakes,” she said.
