ANOTHER 155M INDIANS VOTE, OPPOSITION NEEDS TO WIN BIG

Congress, allies must conquer southern states to oust Modi

VOTERS across swaths of southern India began queuing up early on Thursday in the second phase of a mammoth, staggered general election, in which opposition parties are trying to stop Prime Minister Narendra Modi from winning a second term.

More than 155 million people were eligible to vote in the second phase, which covered 95 parliament constituencies in 12 states, including parts of restive Jammu and Kashmir. India’s Parliament

has 545 members.

The focus was on the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, where the main opposition Congress party and its allies needed to win big if they were to oust Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

BJP secured a landslide majority in the previous general election in 2014, in part by winning sweeping victories in six northern states that gave the party 70 per cent of all its seats, said Neelanjan Sircar, an assistant professor at Ashoka University near the capital here.

“You can never expect you’ll do that again,” he said. “Those seats that you lose, you’ll have to make up somewhere.”

Sircar said BJP were looking to make gains in Karnataka.

The election began last week and would end next month in a giant exercise involving almost 900 million people. Votes would be counted on May 23 and the results were expected the same day.

Modi and BJP ran an aggressive campaign, playing to their nationalist, Hindu-first base and attacking rivals they accused of appeasing minorities.

Critics said such divisive election rhetoric was a threat to India’s secular foundations.

“Communal polarisation is obviously the biggest issue for me,” said Rakesh Mehar, who voted in Karnataka’s capital, Bengaluru. “And the growing intolerance in the country is what worries me the most.”

A firebrand Hindu ascetic from BJP who governed northern Uttar Pradesh was banned from campaigning for a few days because of anti-Muslim comments, India’s election commission said on Monday.

The Congress party focused on concerns about rising unemployment and agrarian distress and was staking it campaign on a promise for a generous handout to India’s poorest families.

Voters in Bengaluru, once a sleepy retirement town that had been transformed into India’s technology hub, said they wanted lawmakers who would fix infrastructure problems, such as traffic congestion and poor water management.

“We have been voting every time expecting a change, but nothing has come so far. People are talking about national issues,” said Manjunath Munirathnappa. “But only when they fix the local issues will there be progress in the nation.”