New Delhi: 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 (RPF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) 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 on September 6 in Srinagar for a final review of the arrangements for the balloting, which ends October 8, a spokesman for the organisation said.

The BSF said that it has posted R S Aggrawal in Srinagar to co-ordinate 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 September 6.

"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 September 6.

Some 36,500 people have been killed in Kashmir in the Muslim rebellion launched against Indian rule in 1989.

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 that the security juggernaut would 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 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.