India's top politicians hit the campaign trail in key northern heartland states on Wednesday after exit polls from the first round of a national election suggested the Hindu nationalist-led coalition would retain power.
Fighting to save the fortunes of her party, Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born head of the main opposition Congress, addressed public rallies in searing heat in the most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, which holds the key to power nationally.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party has played down its hard-line Hindu image and campaigned on a feel-good platform of economic growth and peace with Pakistan, factors which had bolstered its standing before the election.
More than a quarter of India's electorate of 670 million voted in Tuesday's first round which was marred by guerrilla and left-wing violence in several states. Exit polls said Vajpayee's ruling coalition would return to power, but suggested its majority would not be as large as earlier projected.
Election-related violence persisted on Wednesday. Militants hurled a grenade at a campaign vehicle of an independent candidate in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir state, wounding 12 people, police said. Two policemen were wounded in a separate attack on a patrol car.
In the east, authorities sealed the border with Bangladesh and ordered air surveillance as the strife-torn state of Tripura prepared to hold the vote on Thursday amid a threat by tribal insurgent groups to attack polling stations.
Gandhi said the BJP, which her party says is biased against the nation's 120 million Muslims, remained a threat to the country's secular traditions and must be kept away from power.
"They have spread social evil. They have strengthened the forces of communalism," Gandhi, the torch-bearer of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, told a rally in the family borough of Rae Bareli from where she is contesting the election.
About 10,000 people listened to Gandhi, garlanded with marigolds, as she spoke from a dais adorned with pictures of her husband Rajiv Gandhi and her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, both former prime ministers who were assassinated.
Uttar Pradesh, which along with neighbouring Bihar accounts for 120 of parliament's 545 seats, votes on Monday in the third phase of the world's biggest election.
Vajpayee's BJP-led coalition would return to power but with a reduced majority, a television poll said, on the basis of Tuesday's vote for just over a quarter of the seats.
Electronic voting machines are being used nation-wide for the first time and have been transported by helicopter, bullock-cart and elephant to reach remote polling booths.
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