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AHMEDABAD, India, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Indian authorities rounded up potential troublemakers and sent riot police out to patrol the streets on Wednesday ahead of an election in western Gujarat state dominated by memories of Hindu-Muslim clashes.

Police said they had rounded up hundreds of suspected troublemakers before Thursday's poll to prevent any outbreak of violence in the state where at least 1,000 people were killed in February and March in India's worst religious clashes in a decade.

State police chief K. Chakravarty told Reuters that up to 50,000 people had been bound over to keep the peace in the run-up to the state assembly poll -- a standard practice in Indian elections.

The election is a two-horse race between the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which controlled the outgoing state assembly and also heads the national coalition government, and the main opposition Congress party.

Analysts see it as a test of the electoral popularity of hardline Hindu policies after outgoing Chief Minister Narendra Modi made Hindu revivalism the main plank of his campaign.

Modi has denied allegations of complicity in the killing of Muslims in the riots this year.

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