India's election campaign starts

The Hindu-nationalist BJP has launched its campaign for the forthcoming Indian general election with a rally in Bombay; around eighty-thousand people took part.

The Congress Party's campaign is already underway.

The Election Commission said on Thursday that the poll will be held on the sixteenth, twenty-second, and twenty-eighth of February and the seventh of March.

Eight-hundred-thousand polling booths will be set up for India's six-hundred-million electors.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service