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A semi-algebraic set is a subset of the real space defined by polynomial equations and inequalities having real coefficients and is a union of finitely many maximally connected components. We consider the problem of deciding whether two given points in a semi-algebraic set are connected; that is, whether the two points lie in the same connected component. In particular, we consider the semi-algebraic set defined by f <> 0 where f is a given polynomial with integer coefficients. The motivation comes from the observation that many important or non-trivial problems in science and engineering can be often reduced to that of connectivity. Due to its importance, there has been intense research effort on the problem. We will describe a symbolic-numeric method based on gradient ascent. The method will be described in two papers. The first paper (the present one) will describe the symbolic part and the forthcoming second paper will describe the numeric part. In the present paper, we give proofs of correctness and termination for the symbolic part and illustrate the efficacy of the method using several non-trivial examples.