India’s six-week-long national election has ended as the last of the country’s hundreds of millions of voters cast their ballots.
Candidates travelled across the country during the multi-phase election as poll workers hiked to remote villages and voters lined up for hours in sweltering heat.
The results of the election, which is widely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade in power, are expected to be announced on Tuesday.
If Mr Modi wins, he will be only the second Indian leader to retain power for a third term after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister.
Most poll surveys show Mr Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leading over the broad opposition alliance that is challenging them, led by the Congress party. The votes will be counted on Tuesday, with results expected by the end of the day.
Mr Modi’s campaign began on a platform of economic progress, with vows to uplift the poor and turn India into a developed nation by 2047. But it turned increasingly shrill in recent weeks as Mr Modi used polarising rhetoric in speeches that targeted the country’s Muslim minority, who make up 14% of India’s 1.4 billion people.
After campaigning ended on Thursday, Mr Modi went to a memorial site honouring a famous Hindu saint to meditate on national television. The opposition Congress party called it a political stunt and said it violated election rules as the campaigning period has ended.
When the election kicked off in April, Mr Modi and his BJP were widely expected to clinch another term.
Since coming to power in 2014, Mr Modi has enjoyed immense popularity. His supporters see him as a self-made, strong leader who has improved India’s standing in the world, and credit his pro-business policies with making the economy the world’s fifth-largest.
At the same time, his rule has seen brazen attacks and hate speech against minorities, particularly Muslims. India’s democracy, his critics say, is faltering and Mr Modi has increasingly blurred the line between religion and state.
But as the campaign ground on, his party faced stiff resistance from the opposition alliance and its main face, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party. They have attacked Mr Modi over his politics and are hoping to benefit from growing economic discontent.
Pre-poll surveys showed that voters were increasingly worried about unemployment, the rise in food prices and an overall sentiment that only a small portion of Indians have benefited despite brisk economic growth under Mr Modi, making the contest appear closer than initially anticipated.
The seventh round of polls covered 57 constituencies across seven states and one union territory, completing a national election to fill all 543 seats in the powerful lower house of parliament.
Nearly 970 million voters – more than 10% of the world’s population. More than 8,300 candidates ran for five-year terms in parliament.
In Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, voters lined up outside polling stations early on Saturday morning to avoid the scorching heat, with temperatures expected to reach 34C. Mr Modi was challenged there by the state’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, who heads the regional Trinamool Congress party.
In this election, Mr Modi’s BJP – which controls much of India’s Hindi-speaking northern and central parts – sought to expand their influence by making inroads into the country’s eastern and southern states, where regional parties hold greater sway.
The BJP also banked on consolidating votes among the Hindu majority, who make up 80% of the population, after Mr Modi opened a long-demanded Hindu temple on the site of a razed mosque in January. Many saw it as the unofficial start of his campaign, but analysts said the excitement over the temple may not be enough to yield votes.
Mr Modi ramped up anti-Muslim rhetoric after voter turnout dipped slightly below 2019 figures in the first few rounds of the 2024 polls, in a move seen as a bid to energise his core Hindu voter base. But analysts say it also reflected the absence of a single big-ticket campaign issue, which Mr Modi has relied on to power previous campaigns.
In 2014, Mr Modi’s status as a political outsider with plans to crack down on deep-rooted corruption won over voters disillusioned with decades of dynastic politics. And in 2019, he swept the polls after his government launched air strikes into rival Pakistan in response to a suicide bombing in Kashmir that killed 40 Indian soldiers.
But things are different this time, analysts say, giving Mr Modi’s political challengers a potential opportunity.
“The opposition somehow managed to derail his plan by setting the narrative to local issues, like unemployment and the economy. This election, people are voting keeping various issues in mind,” said Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst.
