Indians began voting in the second phase of the world’s biggest election today. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is the favorite to win with his Hindu nationalist Indian People’s Party (BJP), and his rivals are stepping up their campaigning, focusing on hot-button issues such as religious discrimination and affirmative action or taxes, according to Reuters.
Nearly one billion (970 million) people can vote in the seven-phase parliamentary elections that began on April 19 and will end on June 1.
Modi is seeking a record third consecutive term based on his economic record, social security measures, national pride, Hindu nationalism and personal popularity. Polls suggest he will easily win a comfortable majority.
His challengers have formed an alliance of more than two dozen parties, promising more affirmative action, more benefits and an end to what they call Modi’s autocratic rule. The Indian People’s Party is opposed by a disparate alliance of more than twenty opposition parties called INDIA, in which the most famous personalities are Rahul Gandhi from the Indian National Congress (INK) and the highest representative of the Indian metropolis of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal. Before the elections, INK repeatedly complained about unequal conditions, pointing, among other things, to accusations of corruption by some high-ranking representatives of the opposition parties, or to the fact that the government had the Indian National Congress’s bank accounts frozen before the elections.
Modi’s party has long been accused of curtailing the rights of the nearly 200 million Muslim minority in the country of 1.4 billion, fomenting religious intolerance and threatening India’s secular democratic character. In the past, human rights organizations drew attention to, among other things, cases of the demolition of houses and shops owned by Muslims or the liquidation of mosques.
In the second phase of the election, Indians will decide to fill 88 of the 543 seats in the lower house of parliament, with 160 million people eligible to vote. The second phase of the election was spread across 13 states and federal territories in the world’s most populous country. More than half of the seats in the current race are in the southern states of Kerala and Karnataka and the northwestern state of Rajasthan.
India’s Supreme Court today refused to order any change in the vote counting process in response to petitions. Since 2002, the country has been voting in polling stations on electronic voting devices.
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