India election: Modi races into early lead as vote count gets underway

With exit polls pointing to a crushing third defeat in a row for the Congress party and its opposition alliance, where does that leave the Gandhi-Nehru family? The Independent travels to some of the last bastions of Congress support in northern India, where cracks are appearing.

The exit polls predicting a landslide win for prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party have pushed Indian shares to lifetime highs yesterday while the rupee gained and bond yields dropped.

Nearly one billion people were eligible to vote in the seven-phase, seven-week poll which began on 19 April and held in searing summer heat with temperatures touching nearly 50C in some parts.

More than 66 per cent of registered voters turned out, just one percentage point lower than the previous election in 2019, squashing pre-poll concerns that voters might shun a contest thought to be a foregone conclusion in Mr Modi’s favour.

Mr Modi, 73, who first swept to power in 2014 by promising growth and change, is seeking to be only the second prime minister after India’s independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru to win three straight terms.

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance raced to an early lead as votes were counted, pulling ahead in more than 155 seats of the total 543 in the lower house of parliament.

Early trends on TV channels showed the opposition INDIA alliance leading in more than 60 seats.

The first votes counted are postal ballots, which are paper ballots, mostly cast by troops serving outside their home constituencies or officials away from home on election duty.

This year, postal votes were also offered to voters over 85 years of age and people with disabilities to allow them to vote from home.

TV exit polls broadcast after voting ended on 1 June projected a big win for Mr Modi, but exit polls have often got election outcomes wrong in India. Nearly one billion people were registered to vote, of which 642 million turned out.

However, if Mr Modi’s victory is confirmed, his BJP will have triumphed in a vitriolic campaign in which parties accused each other of religious bias and of posing a threat to sections of the population.

A decade of Narendra Modi’s leadership has left India deeply divided.

Mr Modi’s critics and opponents say his Hindu-first politics have bred intolerance, hate speech and brazen attacks against the country’s minorities, especially Muslims, who comprise 14 per cent of the population.

India’s economy, one of the fastest-growing, has become more unequal under Mr Modi. While stock markets reach record-highs and millionaires multiply, youth unemployment has soared, with only a small portion of Indians benefitting from the economic boom.

The country’s democracy, Mr Modi’s critics say, is faltering under his government, which has increasingly wielded strong-arm tactics to subdue political opponents, squeeze independent media and quash dissent. The government has rejected such accusations and say democracy is flourishing.

As polls opened in mid-April, a confident BJP initially focused its campaign on “Modi’s guarantees,” highlighting the economic and welfare achievements that his party says have reduced poverty. With him at the helm, “India will become a developed nation by 2047,” Mr Modi repeated in rally after rally.

But the campaign turned increasingly shrill, as Mr Modi ramped up polarising rhetoric that targeted the Muslim minority, a tactic seen to energise his core Hindu majority voters.

His opposition, the INDIA alliance led by the Congress party, has attacked Mr Modi over his Hindu nationalist politics. It hopes to benefit from the simmering economic discontent, and its campaign has rallied around issues of joblessness, inflation and inequality.

In his 10 years in power, Narendra Modi has transformed India’s political landscape. His popularity has outstripped that of his party’s and has turned a parliamentary election into one that increasingly resembles a presidential-style campaign.

The result is that his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party relies more and more on Modi’s enduring brand to stay in power, with local politicians receding into the background even in state elections.“Modi was not just the prime campaigner, but the sole campaigner of this election,” said Yamini Aiyar, a public policy scholar.

His supporters see him as a self-made, strong leader who has improved India’s standing in the world, and credit his pro-business policies with making the economy the world’s fifth-largest.

Critics say he also relies on divisive rhetoric appealing to his Hindu nationalist base – Modi’s anti-Muslim speeches on the campaign trail saw his party admonished by the country’s election body.

Nearly 970 million people, more than 10 per cent of the world’s population, were eligible to vote. Turnout was around 66 per cent on average across the seven phases, according to official data.

The tallying of votes at counting centres in each of the 543 constituencies where polls were held could stretch into the evening before a final result is declared by the Election Commission of India.

But leads will start to emerge earlier, which will give an idea of where the results may be headed.

India has begun counting the more than 640 million votes cast in the world’s largest ever democratic exercise, which is widely expected to return prime minister Narendra Modi for a third term in power.The six-week-long election was seen as a referendum on Mr Modi.

If the 73-year-old wins, it will only be the second time an Indian leader has retained power for a third term after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister.

Exit polls on Saturday by major television channels projected a comfortable win for Mr Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies over a broad opposition alliance led by the Congress party and its main campaign leader, Rahul Gandhi.

Indian television channels have had a mixed record in the past in predicting election results.

Vishal Aheer and his team trudged up treacherous Himalayan mountain paths and across rickety bridges for seven hours to make sure that just 185 Indian villagers could vote in what has been a mammoth election.

The rules say no one should have to travel more than 2 km or so to cast their ballot – and Almi, a hamlet in Mandi constituency in the state of Himachal Pradesh, is one of the inaccessible areas where officials have to bring the ballot box to the voters.

“We risked our life to get here,” Aheer said after a trek that crossed rivers, pools and mountain passes.

As voting concludes in India amid a heatwave, people in the southern city of Bengaluru are focused on a singular issue: the paucity of water.

The city, known as India’s Silicon Valley due to its IT industry, has been grappling with a water crisis so severe that some days there isn’t enough to take a shower or even flush a toilet.

However, the crisis has received scant attention during the ongoing election campaigns.

A miniature city has mushroomed just hours away from Delhi, ruled by Indian farmers from the breadbasket state of Punjab.

Stretching over 6km of the national highway connecting Punjab to the capital New Delhi, this protest city stands as a blot on the otherwise dominant position enjoyed by Narendra Modi across northern India.

Though the farmers have been camped out here since February, they see Saturday’s voting across Punjab – part of the final day of India’s marathon election – as their best opportunity yet to have their voices heard by the government in Delhi.

Their demands for state-backed guarantees on prices for certain key crops date back to when huge farmer protests brought Delhi to its knees in 2020 and 2021, finally forcing Modi to repeal a set of agricultural reforms and agree to set up a minimum support price (MSP).

They say he has failed to keep that promise and are furious that he could nonetheless be on the brink of winning an historic third term in power.