LUCKNOW (India) Feb 21: Voting closed on Friday in the final phase of crucial Indian state elections, with exit polls suggesting a damaging setback for the ruling BJP.

Voting in the restive northeastern state of Manipur was marred when an explosion, triggered by suspected militants on Wednesday night, killed three civilians and critically injured seven others.

But the main focus was on Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous and politically most prestigious state — where voting was staggered over three days to cope with an electorate of close to 100 million.

Exit polls conducted by several television channels, which have proved highly unreliable in previous state elections, indicated that Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s BJP party would lose its position as the largest single party in the Uttar Pradesh legislature.

Vajpayee’s multi-party coalition government in New Delhi is fractious and a bad result in Uttar Pradesh could prompt some key BJP allies to start searching for greener political pastures.

The exit polls said the regional, caste-based Samajwadi Party would take the largest number of seats, while falling short of a simple majority in the 403-member state assembly.

The most likely result has always been a hung parliament which would trigger a furious round of horse-trading as the main parties seek allies to put together a government.

While playing down suggestions that the poll amounted to a referendum on Vajpayee’s government, the BJP had campaigned not on local issues but on the broader issue of terrorism and how the party is best-equipped to protect the country.

The speeches of BJP leaders had been liberally peppered with anti-Pakistani rhetoric at a time when hundreds of thousands of Indian troops are locked in a tense military face-off on the border.

But in a state where caste and religion have traditionally defined voting patterns, some observers believe the BJP tactics of marginalising local issues could backfire.

Turnout was a respectable 50-55 percent in all three stages of polling and results are expected to be announced late on Sunday or early next week.

The size of the election had attracted the participation of an eclectic group of candidates, including eunuchs and magicians, with top-ranking film stars adding a touch of glamour to the campaigning.

Among the districts voting on Thursday was the pilgrimage town of Ayodhya, focus of a bitter religious dispute over plans to build a Hindu temple on the ruins of a mosque razed by Hindu zealots in 1992.

The right-wing Hindu groups leading the temple construction campaign have close links with the BJP and Vajpayee had worked hard to sideline the divisive issue during campaigning.

The destruction of the mosque triggered some of post-independence India’s worst Hindu-Muslim violence, which left around 2,000 people dead.

With violence before and during polling a common feature in Uttar Pradesh, the authorities had deployed around 60,000 police and paramilitary personnel to ensure a free and fair election.

Voting has already been completed in two other states, Punjab and Uttaranchal, while Manipur was winding up its two-phase poll on Thursday.

The run-up to the election in Manipur — a state ravaged by disparate separatist movements — was marked by a string of rebel attacks on the security forces and candidates.

Police said Wednesday night’s bomb attack appeared to have been aimed at a security vehicle, but a public bus took the brunt of the blast in which three passengers were killed.—AFP