Voting in one of India’s most acrimonious elections in decades entered its final day yesterday as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to retain his overall majority.
The seventh and final round of voting ended the world’s biggest election with 900 million eligible voters from Goa’s beaches to Mumbai’s slums and Ladakh’s Himalayan monasteries.
Long lines formed outside polling stations in eight northern states electing the final 59 candidates to India’s 543-seat lower house. Vote counting is to begin on Thursday.
Heavy security was imposed in West Bengal, which has seen street battles between followers of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and opposition groups.
An improvised bomb was thrown from a motorbike at one polling booth in the state capital, Kolkata, but no one was injured, officials said.
One group attacked a makeshift BJP office in the city and police also cleared others who were blocking polling stations.
Modi’s constituency in Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh was also among those to vote.
The BJP has campaigned aggressively and played up recent cross-border airstrikes against Pakistan. The opposition, led by the Congress Party and its leader, Rahul Gandhi, have accused Modi of pursuing divisive policies and neglecting the economy.
Modi and Gandhi have hurled insults at each other on a near daily basis with the prime minister calling his rival a “fool,” while Gandhi derides Modi as a “thief.”
The animosity has taken a toll on voters.
“All the abuse and misconduct claims suggest that standards in Indian politics have slipped badly,” Asit Banerjee, a history teacher in Kolkata, said as he lined up to vote.
“Endless mudslinging and bitter comments pervaded the campaign. We are losing hope in democracy, it is time for a reset,” the 60-year-old said.
Writing in the Hindustan Times, political commentator Karan Thapar said that Modi’s message “played on our insecurities and strummed upon our deep inner fears.”
He also criticized Gandhi’s campaign.
Pollsters say that Modi remains personally popular, but his party’s overall majority is at risk from a backlash.
The 68-year-old Modi has held 142 rallies across India during the campaign, sometimes five a day, but pollsters say that the BJP could lose dozens of the 282 seats it won in its 2014 landslide.
On Saturday, Modi, dressed in a long robe and saffron sash, trekked to a Himalayan shrine to meditate. Indian media widely used images showing him seated on a bed inside a cave in the country’s north.
The Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies estimated that the outlay on this election could top US$7 billion, making it one of the priciest contests globally, with the lion’s share of the spending by the BJP.
Much has been spent on social media advertising and messages, with the parties using armies of “cyberwarriors” to bombard India’s hundreds of millions of Facebook and WhatsApp users.
False reports and doctored images have abounded, including of Gandhi and Modi having lunch with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in