NEW DELHI, India -- India's ongoing parliamentary elections were postponed until June following Tuesday's assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
India's most prominent political figure was killed by a remote- control bomb as he was campaigning in the southeastern city of Madras for this week's elections.
Public opinion polls had predicted Gandhi's Congress (I) Party would capture the largest number of seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament, but would fall just short of an absolute majority.
Voting in the election began Monday and was scheduled to be completed Thursday and Saturday. But the assassination Tuesday prompted officials to postpone India's ongoing elections until mid-June.
Before Gandhi's death, at least 200 people had been killed in the campaign and the week of voting that began Monday in the bloodiest election since India's independence in 1947.
Senior leaders of the Congress (I) Party met in an emergency session to find a successor to Gandhi, India's most prominent political personality. A party spokesman, calling Gandhi's death a 'sudden shock, ' said the party would decide Wednesday on a new leader.
Security forces were put on alert nationwide after Gandhi's death, and police in the capital were rushed to sensitive areas in an effort to prevent the kind of rioting that followed the Oct. 31, 1984, assassination of Gandhi's mother, Indiara Gandhi, who was prime minister at the time.
Even before Tuesday's assassination, thousands of extra paramilitary troops were rushed to areas gripped by election violence.
Political parties had blamed each other for the unrest that flared in four states during Monday's first day of voting in history's largest elections.
Supporters of rival political groups armed with guns, knives and home-made bombs battled each other and security personnel. The Press Trust of India reported the clashes spread Tuesday to new areas of the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar despite curfews, enforced by troops, in several cities.
The agency said authorities had dispatched more than 2,000 extra paramilitary troops to the trouble-hit areas.
Before the assassination, Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan said his organization had overturned elections for five parliamentary seats and 15 state assembly posts in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh because of violence and voting irregularities.
Other EC officials said new voting had been ordered in at least 837 polling centers because of the irregularities, including the seizure of ballot boxes by party thugs. Authorities have set up some 600,000 booths across the country for the three days of ballotting.
The elections were staggered over three days to ensure adequate security. Voting was to take place in different districts on different days. Ballot boxes were being held at regional counting centers until a manual tally was scheduled to begin Monday.
More than 514 million people were eligible to vote in the world's largest democracy.
The leading political parties accused each other of responsibility for the outbreak of violence during the opening round of voting, bitterly swapping allegations in the press.
The Congress (I) Party accused the Janata Dal of V.P. Singh, also an ex-premier, of fomenting violence in Uttar Pradesh. The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party also leveled similar charges against the Janata Dal.
Both the Congress and BJP demanded a new election in V.P. Singh's home district in Uttar Pradesh. At the same time, the two parties accused each other of causing clashes in Calcutta in West Bengal state.
