Indians lined up to vote amid unprecedented security on Sunday as the final phase of a massive, staggered election got underway to decide whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi returns for a second term.
Many see this election as a referendum on Modi who won a landslide in 2014.
Sunday’s voting will take place in 59 seats, including Modi’s constituency Varanasi, a holy Hindu city in the bellwether northern state of Uttar Pradesh.
Around 900 million Indians are eligible to vote in the seven-phase election, with vote counting to begin on Thursday.
The 39-day poll began in the wake of aerial clashes and escalated tensions with neighbouring Pakistan, which Modi’s ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) used to focus its campaign on national security.
The main opposition Congress party and other regional blocs concentrated on the government’s economic mismanagement and inability to create jobs in their attempt to win voters.
Security was tight around voting stations in Kolkata and surrounding areas after India’s election commission suspended campaigning on Wednesday, a day early, after violence in the state’s capital, Kolkata.
India’s parliament has a total of 545 seats, out of which the BJP won 272 in the previous general election in 2014 to secure a single-party majority for the first time in around three decades.
