By Subir Bhaumik BBC correspondent in Nellie, Assam

Locals braved technical glitches and the heat to register their vote

Communities who have fought and killed each other in a fierce conflict over land and political power - Muslims and Hindus of Bengali origin, Lalung tribesmen, ethnic Assamese - all turned out in large numbers.

Muslim women in black veils stood besides Lalung and Assamese women in their colourful ethnic Mekla-Chadors (two-piece ethnic wear), all impatient to vote.

"The electronic voting machine has malfunctioned, so we sweat in this hot sun but we will not go until we have voted," said Asiqa Rehman, a 28-year-old housewife.

"I have not yet fed my baby but he can bear with me for this day," she said.

Massacre

Her father and two brothers, descendants of Muslim migrants from what is now Bangladesh, died in the fierce riots that gripped Nellie in Assam state in February 1983.

Nearly 3,000 Muslims died in the riots, massacred by the ethnic Assamese and Lalungs who wanted to evict them as part of protests against so-called foreigners.

The movement ended in 1985, six years after it started, when Delhi signed an agreement with the protest leaders, promising to deport illegal immigrants.

"We are still harassed but we don't fear attacks like in 1983. Times have changed," said Aslam Sadiq, a Muslim school teacher.

"Most of the Assamese and the Lalungs realised they were misled by their leaders. We are all poor people and we have common enemies like poverty."

Ranadhir Chakrabarty, a local Congress party worker, said hundreds of farmers had threatened not to vote unless the government built a sluice gate on the embankment of a river that floods arable land in and around Nellie.

But villager Milan Pator said they all turned up to vote when the Congress leaders promised to construct the sluice gate "within a few years".

Fighting continues

The Congress has ruled Assam since they returned to power in 2001.

We don't want to know why our fathers and uncles fought each other like animals Habib orphan

The party also holds 10 of the state's 14 seats in parliament.

The BJP has emerged as its main challenger, leaving behind the regional Assam Gana Parishad (AGP) party.

Twenty-one years after Nellie, ethnic tribespeople continue to fight settlers whom they see as unwelcome encroachers on their land and limited local resources.

As elections took place in Assam's seven parliamentary constituencies, Goalpara district was brought under curfew and soldiers were deployed to stop riots between ethnic Rabha tribesmen and Muslims of Bengali origin.

But at Nellie, a whole generation of Muslims and Lalungs and Assamese, have grown up in an orphanage determined to put a history of hate behind them.

"We have grown up as brothers and sisters," says Habib, one of the orphans.