(Adds BJP leader's comments)

By Ashok Pahalwan

JAMMU, India, Oct 29 (Reuter) - The Indian government plans to move up to 25,000 extra troopers into Jammu and Kashmir if, as expected, elections are held in the troubled state in the next few months, officials said on Sunday. "The election notification is expected any time, possibly in the next few days," said a senior official in Jammu, the state's winter capital.

The forces would be drawn from the Border Security Force (BSF), Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), he said.

Those three units already have tens of thousands of troopers in the Himalayan state, which has been torn by a five-year-old separatist rebellion in which more than 20,000 people have died. The government refuses to indicate how many security forces including army are in the state, but independent observers and diplomats put the total at well over 100,000.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) said the fresh forces have been told to be ready to move to Kashmir at short notice in anticipation of a possible decision to call state assembly elections, which were last held in 1987. India's president has exercised direct rule over the state since the rebellion erupted in 1990.

The latest six-month authority to exercise direct rule expires on January 17, and Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's government is considering whether to hold polls before then. A group of senior cabinet ministers chaired by Home (Interior) Minister S.B. Chavan and including Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh met on Saturday to discuss whether to hold elections.

The ministers were to pass on their assessment of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir to Rao, who was widely expected to take a decision before leaving India on a foreign trip on Thursday, officials said. The Election Commission has the final word on whether to hold polls. The cabinet ministers also considered a demand for greater state autonomy by the National Conference, the main Kashmiri party favouring continued integration of the state into India. National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah wants India to reinstate a 1952 agreement limiting Delhi's control over the state's affairs to defence, foreign affairs and communications. He has threatened to oppose polls unless he has his way.

Rao has baulked at awarding Jammu and Kashmir greater self-rule before elections, but newspapers speculated he might make a commitment to grant greater powers to the state, putting them into place only after polls. The leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), L.K. Advani, said on Sunday that destructive forces would be unleashed if Rao bowed to Advani's demands.

"Even to consider going back to 1953 would be to put a premium on insurgency," PTI quoted Advani as saying. "Any such step will unleash disintegrative forces." The All Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, a coalition of more than 30 Kashmiri separatist groups, opposes elections and wants implementation of a 1948 United Nations resolution calling for a plebescite to determine whether the state stays in India.