VARANASI, India - From the snowbound Chinese border to holy Ganges cities, tens of millions of Indians began voting in a month-long election with signs that an unstable coalition may emerge in the middle of an economic slowdown.

The ruling Congress party-led coalition appears to lead against an alliance headed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but both may need the support of a host of smaller and unpredictable regional parties to win office.

Maoist rebel violence marred the mostly peaceful vote, with five election officials killed in a land mine blast in Chhattisgarh state. Eleven police were killed across the central and eastern red belt where Thursday's election was centered.

The main fear among investors is that the world's largest democratic exercise, involving 714 million voters and hundreds of parties, will lead to the rise of a Third Front government of communist and regional groups.

The signs are the election will lead to a short-lived arrangement, said V. Ravichandar, managing director of Feedback Consulting, which advises multinationals in India. It will be like Italy, something happens every year or year-and-a-half.

The uncertainty comes as a once-booming India reels from a crunch that has cost millions of jobs. It has ignited fears of political limbo just as India balances needs to help millions of poor with worries over its biggest fiscal gap in two decades.

The government deployed hundreds of thousands of police to protect more than 140 million people who could vote on Thursday in polls that covered some of India's poorest states hit by the four-decade-old Maoist insurgency.

Maoists, who saying they are fighting for the rights of poor farmers, kidnapped eight poll officials in Jharkhand state. In some Maoist-hit areas people did not vote, fearing attacks by the rebels who had threatened to cut off their hands.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described Maoist violence as India's biggest internal security threat. Some 500 civilians and police were killed in insurgent clashes last year.

The outcome of the five-stage election will be known on May 16. India's elections are notoriously hard to predict and polls have been wrong in the past. Exit polls are banned.

A clear win by either of the two main parties could see a rally on India's markets, but the emergence of a weak coalition of regional and communist parties could see stocks fall by as much as 30 percent, market watchers say.

ARRAY OF CASTES

Thursday's election ranged from the snowbound Chinese border to holy towns on the Ganges River.

Some election officials rode elephants to remote polling stations near the Myanmar border. Other ballots were brought by two-day sea trips to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.

In Varanasi, the northern sacred city on the Ganges River known for its Hindu gurus, many voters arrived on bicycles and bullock carts to cast electronic votes.

Women in saris or burqas, many carrying children, pressed buttons with pictorial symbols of each party, after their fingers were marked with ink to avoid fraud.

India needs many things like jobs for people, homes, water, roads but what is needed first is a stable government, said Sanjay Singh, a college student and a first-time voter.

Ancient caste, religious and ethnic ties will play a huge role in the vote as well as national problems like the slowdown, security fears and local issues from the building of a village water pump to problems of wild elephants trampling on villagers.

The center-left Congress party is wooing voters with populist measures such as food subsidies in a country were hundreds of millions live below the poverty line.

Singh is Congress's official candidate. But Rahul Gandhi, the 38-year-old scion of India's most powerful family dynasty, has become one of the party's main election cards, criss-crossing the nation in helicopter.

The BJP accuses its main rival of poor governance and being weak on security, after a string of militant attacks last year culminated in a rampage in Mumbai by Islamist gunmen that killed 166 people and escalated tensions with nuclear-armed Pakistan.

India