Modi appears set to triumph as voting ends in marathon election

AFP | New Delhi

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked set to win a third straight landslide election victory yesterday at the close of a six-week general election bedevilled by searing heatwaves.

Results will be formally announced on Tuesday but Modi’s victory has long been treated as a foregone conclusion by analysts, in large part due to his aggressive championing of India’s majority faith.

Exit polls showed he was well on track to triumph and Modi himself was certain he had prevailed, saying he was confident that “the people of India have voted in record numbers” to reelect his government.

“They have seen our track record and the manner in which our work has brought about a qualitative change in the lives of the poor, marginalised and downtrodden,” he said on social media platform X.

An exit poll from broadcaster CNN-News18 forecast Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its coalition allies to win 355 seats, well above the 272 needed for a majority in the lower house.

However, such forecasts have proven unreliable in the past at capturing public sentiment in a country with nearly a billion eligible voters.

Many in Modi’s constituency of Varanasi who cast their votes on Saturday were nonetheless excited at the prospect of his return to power.

“I voted for growth and development of my country,” Varanasi resident Brijesh Taksali told AFP outside a polling station where he cast his ballot to re-elect the 73-year-old premier.

Varanasi is the spiritual capital of the Hindu faith, where devotees from around India come to cremate deceased loved ones by the Ganges river.

It was one of the final cities to vote in India’s long election, and where public support for Modi’s ever-closer alignment of religion and politics burns brightest.

Political analyst Ramu Manivannan told AFP that Saturday’s exit polls gave a strong indication that Modi would return to power.

But he cautioned that their forecasts were not definitive given a track record of predictions that diverged widely from final results.

India voted in seven phases over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging an election in the world’s most populous country.

Turnout is down several percentage points from the last national election in 2019, with analysts partly blaming successive heatwaves across northern India.

Authorities said 10 poll workers had died of heatstroke in the eastern state of Bihar on Thursday while setting up for the vote.