LOGISTICS OF VOTE COUNT
The polls were staggering in their size and logistical complexity, with voters casting their ballots in megacities New Delhi and Mumbai, as well as in sparsely populated forest areas and in the high-altitude territory of Kashmir.
Votes were cast on electronic voting machines, so the tally will likely be rapid, with results expected within hours.
Counting will begin at 8am (0230 GMT) in key centres in each state, with the data fed into computers.
“People should know about the strength of Indian democracy”, chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar said Monday, vowing there was a “robust counting process in place”.
India’s major TV networks will have reporters outside each counting centre, competing to flash results for each of the 543 elected seats in the lower house of parliament.
In past years, key trends have been clear by mid-afternoon with losers conceding defeat, even though full and final results may only come late on Tuesday night.
Celebrations are expected at the headquarters of Modi’s BJP if the results reflect exit poll predictions.
The winning post is a simple majority of 272 seats, and the BJP won 303 at the last polls in 2019.
HEATWAVE VOTING
Election chief Kumar on Monday proclaimed the 642 million votes cast a “world record”.
But based on the commission’s figure of an electorate of 968 million, turnout came to 66.3 percent, down roughly one percentage point from 67.4 percent in the last polls in 2019.
Final voter data is yet to be released as repolling took place in two stations in West Bengal state on Monday.
Analysts have partly blamed the lower turnout on a searing heatwave across northern India with temperatures in excess of 45 degrees Celsius.
At least 33 polling staff died from heatstroke on Saturday in Uttar Pradesh state alone, where temperatures hit 46.9 degrees Celsius.
Polling should have been scheduled to end a month earlier, Kumar acknowledged. “We should not have done it in so much heat”, he said.
