India voted in the seventh and final phase of national elections Sunday, wrapping up a 6-week-long long, grueling campaign season with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party seeking reelection for another five years.
The voting also covers Modi’s constituency of Varanasi, a holy Hindu city where he was elected in 2014 with an impressive margin of over 200,000 votes.
He spent Saturday night at Kedarnath, a temple of Hindu god Shiva nestled in the Himalayas in northern India.
The last round of election includes 59 constituencies in eight states. Up for grabs are 13 seats in Punjab and an equal number in Uttar Pradesh, eight each in Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, four in Himachal Pradesh and three in Jharkhand and Chandigarh.
Counting of votes is scheduled for May 23.
In Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal, voters lined up outside polling stations since early morning to avoid scorching heat with temperatures reaching up to 38 degree Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit). Armed security officials stood guard in and outside the centres amid fear of violence.
While the election since April 11 has been largely peaceful, West Bengal state in eastern India is an exception. Modi is challenged here by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who heads the more inclusive Trinamool Congress party and eyes a chance to go to New Delhi as the opposition’s candidate for prime minister.
Modi has visited West Bengal 17 times in an effort to make inroads with his Hindu nationalist agenda that had provoked sporadic violence and prompted the Election Commission to cut off campaigning.
Voters were also up early in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh state, where the Election Commission arranged for drinking water, shade and fans to cool them down.
“I straightaway came from morning walk to cast my vote and was surprised to see enthusiasm among the voters,” said Ramesh Kumar Singh, who was among the first ones to vote. “There were long queues of people waiting patiently to cast their votes, which is a good sign for democracy.”
The election is seen as a referendum on Modi’s five-year rule. He played up the threat of Pakistan, India‘s Muslim-majority neighbour and archrival, especially after the suicide bombing of a paramilitary convoy on Feb. 14 that killed 40 Indian soldiers.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party’s main opposition is Congress party, led by Rahul Gandhi, the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that has produced three prime ministers.
Congress and other opposition parties have challenged Modi over a high unemployment rate of 6.1% and farmers’ distress aggravated by low crop prices.
Some of Modi’s boldest policy steps, such as the demonetisation of high currency notes to curb black-market money and bring a large number of people into tax net, proved to be economically damaging. A haphazard implementation of “one nation, one tax”_ goods and services tax _also hit small and medium businesses.
Voter turnout in the first six rounds was approximately 66%, the Election Commission said, up slightly from 58% in the last national vote in 2014.
Pre-election poll surveys by the media indicate that no party is likely to win anything close to a majority in Parliament with 543 seats. The BJP, which won a majority of 282 seats in 2014, may need some regional parties as allies to stay in power.
A Congress-led government will require a major electoral upset.
Voting began on Sunday across 59 Lok Sabha constituencies spanning seven states and a Union Territory across north, central and east India in the final of the mega seven-phase electoral exercise.
A total electorate of over 10.1 crore is eligible to cast their ballots in this phase which covers all remaining seats in the three states — Uttar Pradesh (13, including the high-profile Varanasi constituency), Bihar (8) and West Bengal (9) – where polling took place across all seven phases, as well as in Madhya Pradesh (8) and Jharkhand (3) which also saw multi-stage voting.
All the 13 constituencies in Punjab, one in Chandigarh, and four in Himachal Pradesh also figure in this phase.
The 918 candidates in this phase include Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad who faces actor-politician and sitting MP Shatrughan Sinha (now in the Congress) in Patna Sahib, and actor-turned-politicians Sunny Deol in Gurdaspur (BJP), and Mimi Chakraborty and Nusrat Jahan, both contesting for the Trinamool Congress from Jadavpur and Basirhat, respectively.
Also contesting are Union Ministers Hardeep Singh Puri (Amritsar), Manoj Sinha (Ghazipur), R.K. Singh (Arrah) — all from BJP, Anupriya Patel of Apna Dal (Mirzapur) Harsimrat Kaur from ally Akali Dal in Bathinda and her husband and party President Sukhbir Singh Badal in Ferozepur, former Union Minister Preneet Kaur (Congress) in Patiala, and RJD supremo Lalu Prasad’s eldest daughter Misa Bharti (Patliputra).
In this phase, the BJP will be defending 30 seats – 11 of the 12 it won in Uttar Pradesh in 2014 as it later lost Gorakhpur in a bypoll, seven in Madhya Pradesh, all four in Himachal Pradesh, five in Bihar, one each in Punjab, Jharkhand and Chandigarh.
Allies Apna Dal won one in Uttar Pradesh and the Akali Dal four in Punjab, while then ally Rashtriya Lok Samta Party of Upendra Kushwaha had won two in Bihar. The Janata Dal-United, which is now an ally, won one seat in Bihar.
The Congress had won five seats — one in Madhya Pradesh and four in Punjab.
Four seats were won by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Punjab and two by the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) in Jharkhand. One seat is currently held by the Samajwadi Party.
In West Bengal, all nine seats were won by the Trinamool Congress.
Re-polling is also being held in several booths in parliamentary seats in six states and in Assembly constituencies in two. These seats include Kerala’s Kannur and Kasargod, Tamil Nadu’s Dharmapuri, Theni, Thiruvallur, Cuddalore and Erode, Haryana’s Faridabad, Uttar Pradesh’s Azamgarh, West Bengal’s Bankura, Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor parliamentary and Chandgiri Assembly constituencies and 34 Assembly segments in 10 Odisha districts.
Voting is also being held in bypolls to four Assembly seats in Tamil Nadu, two in Karnataka and the Panaji Assembly seat, which fell vacant after death of Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar.
The Lok Sabha elections started on April 11. Counting of votes will take place on May 23.