"Within two months we have to stock everything wood, food, winter clothing and kerosene oil for the coming six months. This is our priority and not the elections," says Zakir Hussain, a hotelier.

Kargil might be an election issue across India, but for the people of this picturesque mountain-ringed town, just about recovering from the trauma of a two-month long conflict between Indian troops and Pakistan-backed fighters, priorities are clearly different.

There are no street corner election rallies and there is not much fanfare among locals and party workers. It is as if the people here fear that something terrible is going to happen to them again. The boom ofartillery fire still echoes in their minds. "There may not be much of political activity. But you will find that on election day people will come out to vote in huge numbers," says former police officer Ghulam Hassan Khan, candidate of the ruling National Conference (NC) party.

Khan's main rival is the influential Buddhist leader Thewang Thupstan, fielded by the Congress. There are seven candidates in the fray in the Ladakh constituency, which has a large Buddhist population. Kargil district, which is part of Ladakh, has 143,000 voters in its two Assembly segments of Kargil and Zanskar. In last year's election there was 73.3 per cent polling. This constituency has also a polling booth at an almost unreachable altitude of 5,000 metres and another at Demjok at around the same altitude where 12 people have to vote.

Deepak Kumar, police chief of Kargil from August 1997, too feels that on voting day people will turn up in large numbers. "It is a huge area and the activities are scattered. The politicianshave to take care of far-flung, hilly areas like Zanskar and Mushkoh valleys. They don't concentrate on Kargil town alone," Kumar says. The star campaigner for the NC is Qamar Ali Aakhoon who, during the recent conflict, remained in the town for three months, facing death and adversity.

"The only time I left Kargil was to attend the party's working committee meeting in Srinagar," says Ali, who has asked the state's ruling party to provide an economic package to Kargil. The Shiite Muslims in Kargil say they want to defeat Congress party's Thupstan. "The candidate we are going to vote for has to be a man of integrity," says Asgar Karbaliee, general secretary of the influential Imam Khomanie Memorial Trust.

In any case, for Kargil an electoral battle itself is an unimaginable progression from the tumult of a two-month battle that the hill district witnessed.