VARANASI, India: India’s marathon election drew to a close on Saturday (Jun 1), six weeks after voting began, with voters enduring a scorching heatwave to cast their ballots in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has long been widely expected to win a third term when results are announced on Tuesday, in large part due to his cultivated image as an aggressive champion of India’s majority faith.
A victory for the 73-year-old will make him only the second Indian prime minister after independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru to win three consecutive terms.
His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led alliance is projected to win a majority in the general election, an exit poll summary by the NDTV news channel said on Saturday.
The summary of two exit polls projected the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) could win more than 350 seats in the 543-member lower house of parliament, where 272 is needed for a simple majority.
The NDA won 353 seats in the 2019 election.
The opposition “INDIA” alliance led by Rahul Gandhi’s Congress party was projected to win more than 120 seats.
Several other TV channels are due to project their exit poll numbers later on Saturday.
While exit polls have a patchy record in India as they have often got election outcomes wrong, with analysts saying it is a challenge to get them right in the large and diverse country, many in Modi’s constituency of Varanasi were eager for that to be the case.
“I voted for growth and development of my country,” local resident Brijesh Taksali told AFP outside a polling station.
“There’s only one leader that I know… Narendra Modi. I voted for him.”
Varanasi is the spiritual capital of the Hindu faith, where devotees from around India come to cremate deceased loved ones by the Ganges river.
It is one of the final cities to vote in India’s gruelling election, and where public support for Modi’s ever-closer alignment of religion and politics burns brightest.
Modi has already led the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to two landslide victories in 2014 and 2019, forged in large part by his appeal to the Hindu faithful.
“POLITICS OF TEMPLE”
Earlier this year, Modi presided over the inauguration of a grand temple to the deity Ram, built on the grounds of a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya razed by Hindu zealots in 1992.
Construction of the temple fulfilled a long-standing demand of Hindu activists and was widely celebrated across the country with back-to-back television coverage and street parties.
The ceremony and numerous other chest-beating demonstrations of fidelity to India’s majority religion over the past decade have made many among the country’s 200 million-plus minority Muslim community increasingly uneasy about their futures.
Modi himself has made a number of strident comments about Muslims on the campaign trail, referring to them as “infiltrators”.
He has also accused the motley coalition of more than two dozen opposition parties contesting the poll against him of plotting to redistribute India’s wealth to its Muslim citizens.
Janesar Akhtar, a Muslim clothesmaker working in Varanasi’s famed embroidery workshops, told AFP that the BJP’s sectarian campaigning was an unfortunate distraction from India’s chronic unemployment problems.
“Workshops here are closing down and the Modi government has been busy with the politics of temples and mosques,” the 44-year-old said.
“He is supposed to give us jobs and not tensions.”
