Indian electoral officials, accusing freedom fighters of scaring away voters through violence, claimed 37 percent of registered voters had turned out in occupied Kashmir, where Mujahideen have been waging a bloody war for freedom since 1989.
All Parties Hurriyat Conference Chairman Syed Ali Geelani said that people had been forced to vote by members of occupation forces.
"They were asked (by the troops) to go vote or face consequences," Geelani told a news conference in occupied Srinagar.
An election office spokesman denied the allegations, echoed by other freedom fighters and residents.
"The troops knocked at our doors and ordered us to go and vote," resident Wali Mohammed, 55, told reporters at Machipora village in Kupwara.
At Nagahama, near northern Sopore town, residents also complained of coercion.
A one-day strike call to denounce Indian polls closed down shops and businesses in occupied Srinagar and other towns of occupied Kashmir, witnesses said.
Four senior pro-freedom leaders, who had gone to monitor polls in Kupwara, were detained by the police, they said.
Freedom fighters have warned Kashmiris of "consequences" if they take part in the elections, arguing the polls not resolve the issue of Kashmir. They attacked 11 polling stations with grenades or gunfire in Baramulla district, occupation police said.
Among the casualties were an occupation soldier killed at a booth in Rafiabad. Four occupation policemen and two polling officers were wounded near another booth.
Other casualties included two paramilitary officers hurt by a grenade near a polling booth in Patan.
In other Indian states where the first round of the five-phased parliamentary vote was held on Tuesday, between 50 and 55 percent of the electorate turned out, independent Election Commission officials in New Delhi said.
Releasing provisional figures at a press conference in occupied Srinagar, commission official K.J. Rao claimed 40 percent of voters had turned out in the Jammu-Poonch constituency and 35 to 36 percent in the northern Baramulla-Kupwara seat.
In the last parliamentary elections in 1999, 46 percent of voters turned up to vote in Jammu-Poonch and 27 percent in Baramulla-Kupwara.
In state assembly elections in Kashmir in 2002, 43.7 percent of the electorate turned out to vote despite a surge of poll-linked violence in which some 850 people died. "These are only provisional figures that can change," Rao said, describing the voting as "satisfactory."
Rao said there had been more than a dozen attacks by freedom fighters since late Monday aimed at "scaring away" the voters.
Police said four people were killed and 25 others injured in the attacks.
Two of the dead were security force members and one was a local journalist, Asiya Jeelani, 30, who was travelling in a taxi that hit a landmine, police said, adding the driver of the vehicle was the fourth victim.
In other violence, Omar Abdullah, chief of occupied Kashmir's main opposition National Conference party who is seeking election to parliament, narrowly escaped a landmine blast but a policeman who was part of his motorcade was wounded, police said.
The Jamiat-ul-Mujahedin claimed responsibility for the attack on Abdullah, which came a day after his father, former chief minister Farooq Abdullah, escaped a grenade attack.
Security has been stepped up for the elections, being held in four rounds in occupied Kashmir. Across the rest of India, voting is being held in five stages to May 10.