Indians began voting in the world’s biggest election on Monday which is set to sweep the Hindu nationalist opposition to power at a time of low growth, anger about corruption and warnings about religious unrest.

India’s 814-million-strong electorate are forecast to inflict a heavy defeat on the ruling Congress party, in power for 10 years and led by India’s famous Gandhi dynasty.

Voting began at 7:00am (0130 GMT) in six constituencies in tea-growing and insurgency-wracked areas of the northeast, an often neglected part of the country wedged between Bangladesh, China and Myanmar.

The nine-phase parliamentary election ends on May 12 and the results should be announced four days later.

Santoshi Bhumej was the first woman to cast her ballot at a school which has been converted into a polling station for the day in Dibrugarh in the state of Assam.

“I want the government to reduce poverty and do something for the future of my children,” said the 30-year-old tea plantation worker, who is expecting her fourth child. “I can’t tell you who I voted for, but it is our responsibility to vote as citizens.”

The marathon contest got under way after a bad-tempered campaign which reached new levels of bitterness at the weekend. (see “Background” below)

… The election will be the biggest in history and is a mind-boggling feat of organization as voters travel to nearly a million polling stations.

In 2009, officials walked for four days through snow to deliver voting machines in the Himalayas, while yaks, camels and even elephants were pressed into action elsewhere in the vast country.

Such is India’s population growth that 100 million people have joined the electoral rolls since the last vote five years ago. More than half of the country is aged under 25.

The system will employ electronic fingerprint IDs similar to those used to identify Venezuelan voters to register shoppers who purchase goods at the state-run grocery chains Mercal, Bicentenario and PDVAL. Announcing the system last month, Maduro said it will assure food supplies for 84% of Venezuelans. He did not speak to the impact on the other 16%.

The purpose of the system, Maduro said, is to guard against the purchase of large quantities of food at cut-rate government prices to be marked up and resold on the black market, where some experts have estimated 40% of all subsidized food ends up.

It remains to be seen whether the system will halt the large volumes of low-priced food destined for Mercal markets that end up being sold in Colombian border cities, including Maicao and Cucuta. Venezuelan contraband food reportedly also is sold in Brazil and Cuba.

Although the government has made efforts in recent months to seal the border with Colombia to restrict food contraband from leaving Venezuela, the diversion of subsidized food by hoarders and black marketers is partly responsible for 26% of basic food items having been officially classified as scarce by Venezuela’s central bank.

Other reasons cited by analysts for food scarcities include the decline in recent years in farm production they say is caused by price controls that wipe out farmers’ profits. Another factor is the government’s cash shortage, caused in part by diminished oil revenues, which has restricted its ability to finance the imports on which Venezuelans depend for many basic food items, as well as toilet paper and disposable diapers.

Also Tuesday, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado called for a rally to protest her being ousted last month as a member of the National Assembly [which is controlled by Maduro supporters]. The move by fellow legislators was upheld Monday night by the country’s supreme court.  The court found that Machado deserved disqualification for having appeared before the Organization of American States last month as a temporary member of the Panamanian delegation to protest alleged human rights violations against demonstrators in Venezuela. Machado has stepped in to lead widespread protests against scarcities, inflation and the high crime rate after the unjust arrest Feb. 18 of former Caracas borough Mayor Leopoldo Lopez.

 On Monday, the government officially raised the death toll from nearly two months of protests to 39, with hundreds more people injured. More than 1,000 protesters have been arrested in disturbances in several cities. Two mayors also have been jailed for their alleged failure to keep streets free of blockades erected by protesters.

Last week the government introduced a new “parallel” foreign exchange system that severely devalues the bolivar, the national currency. While the official exchange rate is still 6.3 bolivars to the dollar, the new system enabled those holding dollars to change them at nearly 52 bolivars to the dollar.

UKRAINE – Pro-Russians protesters seize state buildings in eastern Ukraine, Kiev blames Putin

DONETSK/KIEV, Ukraine | Pro-Russian protesters seized state buildings in three east Ukrainian cities on Sunday, triggering accusations from the pro-European government in Kiev that Russian President Vladimir Putin was orchestrating “separatist disorder.”

The protesters stormed regional government buildings in the industrial hub of Donetsk and security service offices in nearby Luhansk, waving Russian flags and demanding a Crimea-style referendum on joining Russia.

Protesters also later seized the regional administrative building in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, Interfax news agency reported. All three cities lie close to Ukraine’s border with Russia.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov vowed to restore order in eastern Ukraine without using violence and also accused Ukraine’s ousted president Viktor Yanukovich, whose political base was in Donetsk, of conspiring with Putin to fuel tensions.

“Putin and Yanukovich ordered and paid for the latest wave of separatist disorder in the east of the country. The people who have gathered are not many but they are very aggressive,” Avakov said in a statement on his Facebook page.

“The situation will come back under control without bloodshed. That is the order to law enforcement officers, it’s true. But the truth is that no one will peacefully tolerate the lawlessness of provocateurs.”

Acting President Oleksander Turchinov called an emergency meeting of security chiefs in Kiev and took personal control of the situation, the parliamentary press service said.

Mainly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine has seen a sharp rise in tensions since Yanukovich’s overthrow in February and the advent of an interim government in Kiev that backs closer ties with the European Union.

Russia has branded the new government illegitimate and has annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region, citing threats to its Russian-speaking majority – a move that has sparked the biggest standoff between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War.

(The news briefs above are from wire reports and staff reports posted at London’s Daily Telegraph on April 7, the Los Angeles Times on April 1 and Reuters at YahooNews on April 6.)