Voters shrugged off steady rain and turned out in force in north-east India on Thursday, as troops guarded polling stations in a state assembly election being held in the shadow of violence.
The vote in remote Arunachal Pradesh state, which shares a long, mountainous border with China, is the first face-off between the centrist Congress party and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since Congress swept back to power in a surprise victory in a May general election.
"They have come out in large numbers wearing colourful tribal outfits," D.J. Bhattacharya, a senior election official, said by telephone from the state capital, Itanagar.
Elephants and helicopters were used to take electronic voting machines to some remote constituencies.
Officials said about 65 percent of the state's 680,000 registered voters turned out and there were no reports of any violence.
Arunachal does not have a history of violence like other states in the volatile north-east, but police said they wanted to avert any spillover of recent separatist attacks in neighbouring states.
More than 70 people have been killed in a wave of bombings and shootings in the states of Nagaland and Assam since the weekend.
The western state of Maharashtra, India's second-largest and home to the financial hub Bombay, will go to the polls on October 13. That vote will be a more telling barometer of the main parties' popularity, five months after the general election.
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