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NEW DELHI, Sunday (AFP)

India is working overtime to spread a security blanket across its zone of disputed Kashmir in the run up to state elections opposed by separatist groups and armed Muslim guerrilla organisations.

Paramilitary agencies such as the Border Security Force (BSF), Railway Protection Force, Central Reserve Police Force and commando units are being deployed ahead of the four-phased vote beginning September 16.

BSF Director General Ajay Raj Sharma met Kashmir's top security planners in the winter capital of Jammu for a final review of the arrangements for the balloting, which ends October 8, a spokesman for the organisation said.

The BSF said it has posted its number two, R. S. Aggrawal, in Kashmir's turbulent summer capital of Srinagar to coordinate between the various paramilitaries, which have sent more than 44,000 additional soldiers to the Himalayan territory.

Already 10,000 local police officials are providing security to certain "protected persons" including political leaders, bureaucrats, journalists and businessmen, a Kashmir police spokesman said. Special security nerve centres have been set up in Srinagar and Jammu to monitor deployment of troops, a home ministry official said in New Delhi on Friday.

"Speed will be of great essence because troops will have to be moved from one location to another well ahead of the voting days," he said of the balloting in Kashmir, where pre-poll violence has already claimed the lives of several political activists, including five on Friday.

The ministry official said after voting in the first two phases on September 16 and 23, the bulk of the troops would be rushed to the militant-infested Kashmir Valley and Hindu-majority Jammu where the third phase of polling will take place on October 1.

He said the security juggernaut will then move to the southern district of Doda for the final round of elections on October 8.

All seven legislative seats of Doda are considered "hyper-sensitive", meaning prone to possible attacks by Muslim guerrillas. Indian security forces as well as the Kashmir administration have identified 4,603 of a total of 7,025 poll booths in 89 regional seats as sensitive or hyper-sensitive.

The federal home ministry, in charge of India's internal security, is also sending hand-picked police officers from the neighbouring state of Punjab to man hyper-sensitive constituencies in Kashmir.

"These men from Punjab are trained in counter-terrorism because of their own experiences," the ministry official said. He was referring to a Sikh separatist rebellion in nearby Punjab state which claimed more than 25,000 lives between 1983 and 1992, before it ebbed. Meanwhile Muslim rebels opposed to state polls in Indian-administered Kashmir attacked an election rally and the home of a candidate, while elsewhere in the state 15 people died in separatist-related violence, police said Saturday.

Militants late Friday attacked the residence of a ruling National Conference candidate in the village of Sharakwara in the northern Baramulla district with rifles and grenades, injuring a police guard.

The candidate, Mohammed Yusuf Bhat, was at home when the attack took place but was unhurt, police said.

Militants also attacked an election rally led by a Congress party candidate in Patan township of the same district late Friday. A vehicle hit a supporter in the panic caused by the attack, killing him on the spot. Muslim militants have increased their attacks ahead of this month's four-phase state elections beginning on September 16.

On Friday they killed a candidate and three of his party workers in the Kupwara district.

Elsewhere in the state two policemen and two civilians were injured in a grenade explosion Saturday. Earlier Indian police Saturday charged a Delhi-based Kashmiri journalist with selling military secrets to rival Pakistan.

Police, in a charge sheet given to a court here, claimed Iftikhar Geelani, who is the son-in-law of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the firebrand leader of Kashmir's Jamaat-e-Islami separatist group, had confessed to his alleged crimes.

Geelani, who was the New Delhi-based bureau chief of the English-language Kashmir Times newspaper, was arrested at his home here on June 9.

The police claimed Geelani had "revealed" that documents recovered from his residence showing Indian military details in Kashmir were supplied by him to Pakistan.

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