Voting centers in twelve states of India opened this Tuesday for the third phase of the general elections, which started on April 19 and which have been marked so far by a higher participation lower than in the previous elections.
Just over one hundred million voters are called to cast their votes between 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. local time (between 1:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. GMT), according to data from the Election Commission of India (ECI). , for its acronym in English).
The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is seeking a third consecutive term and this Tuesday his trusted man and Minister of the Interior, Amit Shah, will play his seat in the Lower House of Parliament or Lok Sabha, in the state of Gujarat (west).
Modi, excited to vote
“Of course I’m excited to vote. I wanted to be the first in line and the rest have followed me,” Sameer Joshi told EFE from the city of Ahmedabad, in Gujarat, after leaving his home almost an hour before the polls opened.
Modi went to vote this morning accompanied by Shah in the Gandhinagar constituency, where both leaders took a mass bath, even signing photographs amid cheers from their followers.
“I voted in the 2024 Parliamentary elections! “I call on everyone to do so, as it will strengthen our democracy,” the prime minister said on social network X.
The third phase of voting covers 94 electoral districts spread across twelve states, including key constituencies in states such as Uttar Pradesh (north), Maharashtra and Gujarat (west), Bihar (east) and Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh (center).
All of them are strongholds of the ruling Hindu nationalist party, which already won a landslide victory in the 2019 elections, and are of immense political importance due to the number of MPs they send to the 543-member Lok Sabha.
Modi’s great opponent in India
Another prominent contender in this phase is Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia in Guna constituency in Madhya Pradesh for a BJP nomination.
The grandson of the last ruler of the principality of Gwalior (center), a status that still commands great respect in the Asian country despite the fact that it abolished royalty in 1971, the opposition Congress Party in 2020 to swear loyalty to Modi.
The first two phases, April 19 and 26, have been marked by below-average voter turnout and an increase in speeches against the Muslim minority of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), described as hate messages. by a coalition of opposition parties.
Led by the Congress Party of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and named INDIA, the alliance maintains that a third consecutive victory for the Hindu nationalist leader would mean the death of democracy in the Asian country due to Modi’s authoritarian tendencies.
The voting process, the largest in the world with around 969 million voters, will end on June 1 and results are expected on June 4.
BY: The Times Union
