AHMEDABAD, Dec 13: Several hundred Muslims fled their homes on Friday in Gujarat, scene of the country’s worst communal bloodshed in a decade, fearing renewed violence if the Bharatiya Janata Party won elections to the state’s assembly.

“We do not want this BJP government,” 50-year-old labourer Mahmood Ali said. “If they come back there’ll be more riots.

“Last time I voted for the BJP because they had promised us a burial ground. Instead of giving us a burial ground they turned the area into a killing field.”

Ahmedabad’s police chief sought to calm such fears. “We won’t allow anything to go wrong on Sunday,” he said. “We are giving full security to all sensitive areas.”

Results are expected to be announced on Sunday.

Up to 400 Muslims from an area that saw some of the worst violence this year shifted to safer Muslim-dominated areas, Muslim residents said, adding they would return after a few days if there was no violence.

“A few hundred people have moved out...because of fear,” said Eliyas Qureshi, a member of a major Muslim relief committee helping riot victims in Naroda Patia, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad.

The BJP leads the national coalition government and the election was seen as a referendum on its brand of hardline Hinduism, known as Hindutva, which could shape the course of national politics into the next federal election in 2004.

Some analysts say the extent of a BJP win over Congress, which called the poll a battle for the soul of a secular India, would be crucial to whether the party seeks to push its hardline stand elsewhere before the national election and in a string of state polls over the next year.—Reuters