Millions queue for India election
Many ignore govt health advice in world’s second most infected nation
PATNA: Millions of Indians turned out to cast ballots in a state election in the world’s biggest vote since the coronavirus emerged, with booths packed out and many ignoring government advice on wearing masks and social distancing.
Some 70 million people are eligible to vote in Bihar, an impoverished eastern state governed by an alliance that includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has promised a free vaccine for every person in the state if it wins.
The election comes as India, the world’s second most-infected nation, has recorded almost eight million virus cases.
“I am a little afraid because corona(virus) is not a small disease,” said Nidhi Kumari, a 21-year-old student queueing up to vote in the outskirts of the state capital Patna.
“But there are precautions at polling booths. They are giving sanitisers and gloves.”
Voting in Bihar has been split across three days – yesterday, Nov 3 and Nov 7 – to reduce crowding at booths.
Virus patients will be allowed to cast a ballot under the supervision of the health authorities.
Modi – who held several rallies across the state in the run-up to the polls – appealed to voters yesterday “to take all Covid precautions while participating in this festival of democracy”.
But at a booth visited by AFP, there were long queues of voters lined up heel-to-toe, and few masks in sight.
Authorities have struggled to enforce social distancing and mask-wearing during rallies across the state that have attracted tens of thousands of people.
The poll is the first in India since Modi imposed a strict lockdown in late March that led to millions of poor migrant workers, many from Bihar, losing their jobs with some having to walk for days or weeks back home.
The state, one of India’s poorest, has been ruled by an alliance of Modi’s Hindu-nationalist BJP and the regional Janta Dal United party for over a decade.
But opinion polls indicate disquiet with the incumbent regime, particularly Chief Minister Nitish Kumar from the JDU, who has been in power for most of the past 15 years, over perceptions he has not done enough to lift the state out of poverty.