Hundreds of thousands of people voted in assembly elections Wednesday in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where the ruling party faces a test of its popularity after one of its leaders was involved in a multibillion-dollar telecommunications scandal.
The regional Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, or DMK, is an ally of India's ruling Congress Party. Although a loss for the DMK will not immediately affect the fortunes of the Congress Party, it will further tarnish the image of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government, already tainted by a string of scandals.
A leading DMK leader, Andimuthu Raja, was forced to resign from his post as India's telecoms minister in November over a scandal relating to the irregular sale of cell phone spectrum in 2008 that reportedly cost the government tens of billions of dollars. Raja is now in jail pending an investigation into the matter.
Meanwhile, Congress has also come under fire for alleged mismanagement and corruption tied to last year's Commonwealth Games and the take-over of valuable Mumbai apartments intended for poor war widows by powerful bureaucrats and politicians' relatives. Voting was also under way for the state legislatures in neighbouring Kerala and Pondicherry states.
Vote-counting and the declaration of results are scheduled to take place on May 13.