Vote counting begins – when will we know the results?
Vote counting is now underway at counting stations in India’s 543 constituencies. Paper ballots, cast by those who cannot vote electronically, will be counted first. Then electronic votes will be counted. These are cast on electronic voting machines, which have been used since 2,000.
Results are announced for each constituency as soon as counting is completed. India follows the first-past-the-post system, under which a candidate with the highest number of votes wins, regardless of garnering a majority or not.
Result trends generally become clear by the afternoon of counting day and are flashed on television news networks. The official count from the Election Commission of India can come hours later.
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 winners of the general election are expected to form a new government by the middle of June.
After the ECI announces the results for all 543 seats, the president invites the leader of the party, or an alliance, which has more than half the seats to form the government.
The party or coalition with 272 or more seats then chooses a prime minister to lead the government.
Key events
Modi is now back in the lead in his seat of Varanasi, according to India’s electoral commission. The NDA bloc is currently leading in 304 seats to the INDIA bloc’s 207 (which, for the moment, means the NDA does not have the two-thirds majority it so desperately wants).
Why would a third term for Modi be historic?
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
According to a flurry of exit polls released on Saturday night, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) are looking at a decisive win and may even gain seats to win a two-thirds majority in parliament, which would allow the government to make far-reaching amendments to the constitution.
It would be a historic achievement for Modi, India’s strongman prime minister, whose Hindu nationalist politics have significantly re-shaped India’s secular democracy over the past decade.
No prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first post-independence premier, has won three consecutive terms.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
The Facebook and Instagram owner Meta approved a series of AI-manipulated political adverts during India’s election that spread disinformation and incited religious violence, according to a report shared exclusively with the Guardian in May.
Facebook approved adverts containing known slurs towards Muslims in India, such as “let’s burn this vermin” and “Hindu blood is spilling, these invaders must be burned”, as well as Hindu supremacist language and disinformation about political leaders.
Another approved advert called for the execution of an opposition leader they falsely claimed wanted to “erase Hindus from India”, next to a picture of a Pakistan flag.
The adverts were created and submitted to Meta’s ad library – the database of all adverts on Facebook and Instagram – by India Civil Watch International (ICWI) and Ekō, a corporate accountability organisation, to test Meta’s mechanisms for detecting and blocking political content that could prove inflammatory or harmful during India’s six-week election.
According to the report, all of the adverts “were created based upon real hate speech and disinformation prevalent in India, underscoring the capacity of social media platforms to amplify existing harmful narratives”.
The adverts were submitted midway through voting:
Just to recap: only one seat has been won so far, and it was won by the BJP by default:
Before counting even began the BJP had won one seat, in the constituency of Surat, where Mukesh Dalal, from the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), won the seat by default after every other candidate was either disqualified or dropped out of the race. It was the first time in 73 years that Surat’s candidate was appointed, not elected.
Guardian correspondent Hannah Ellis-Petersen reported at the time: Surat is not the only constituency in Gujarat to witness swathes of candidates going up against the BJP suddenly withdrawing from the race. In Gandhinagar, where Amit Shah, the home minister and prime minister Narendra Modi’s right-hand man, is running, 16 opposition candidates dropped out before last Tuesday’s voting.
Meanwhile Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appears to be trailing in his own seat of Varanasi, according to India’s Electoral Commission.
The NDA bloc, meanwhile, is leading in 297 seats to the opposition INDIA bloc’s 208 seats.
Can Modi finally win over southern states?
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
In this election, the BJP focused much of its campaign machinery – backed by vast financial resources – on winning seats in south India, particularly the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
Making a breakthrough into India’s southern states, among the richest and most well-educated in the country, is crucial to Narendra Modi’s ambitions to gain an even larger parliamentary majority in this election and extend the reach of the BJP to every corner of the country. However, it will be no easy feat for his party.
Unlike across north India, where the BJP’s dominance is now largely assured, southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala have continued to push back against Modi and the Hindu nationalist narrative of his party. The BJP has never won a seat in Kerala, and it won no seats in Tamil Nadu in the last election, in 2019.
The state’s chief ministers have also emerged as some of Modi’s fiercest critics and accused the BJP of depriving them of tax income and investment to punish and undermine their governments.
But this time round, analysts predicted the BJP could make “significant inroads” in these states, “perhaps even winning a fair number of seats in Tamil Nadu”. “That would be a huge breakthrough for the BJP and could re-shape India’s electoral map in ways nobody thought possible five years ago,” said one analyst.
Exit polls suggest that the BJP’s strategy may have paid off, with the party projected to win its largest ever number of seats in these states:
How does the BJP plan on delivering its ‘guarantee’ of making India the world’s third-largest economy?
The BJP manifesto “guarantees” India will become the third-largest economy in the world, from fifth-largest. The party promises, (if it wins, which it is likely to) to maintain high growth and low inflation while keeping budget deficit under control, Reuters reports.
It also talks about boosting manufacturing and employment opportunities. But a new Modi government is likely to implement labour laws that make it easier for companies to hire and fire employees.
The government has failed to create enough jobs during the last 10 years of power, which has led to sporadic protests from job seekers. According to private think-tank CMIE, the unemployment rate in India rose to 8.1% in April from 7.4% in March 2024.
Modi also has not laid out firm plans to control high food prices, a key plank for the opposition during the campaign.
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
While Modi is predicted to win a large majority, the election campaign has also raised uncomfortable issues for the prime minister, particularly relating to sky high unemployment, particularly for young people, and inequality which has soared to unprecedented levels over the past decade.
We reported from the state of Maharashtra on whether India’s economic story over the past decade is as golden as Modi claims it is:
What has the BJP promised voters?
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The BJP’s manifesto promises a national code that will replace religion-specific civil laws in the country, a move many Muslims say is aimed at curbing centuries-old religious practices that the minority follows. Currently, Indians from different religions can follow laws specific to their faith or opt for a secular code. Laws on who and how many people a person can marry, how to end a marriage, and inheritance differ by religion. The new code will spell out the same set of rules for everyone.
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After Modi inaugurated a temple to the Hindu God Ram at a fiercely contested site earlier this year, fulfilling a long-held promise, party leaders have said another emphatic electoral victory would help them build temples on other disputed sites. Hindu groups have for long claimed that for centuries Muslim invaders built mosques over demolished Hindu temples. Courts are hearing cases against two such mosques in BJP-run Uttar Pradesh state: in Modi’s Varanasi constituency and in Mathura.
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Modi’s party has promised to implement an official report recommending elections to India‘s 28 state assemblies and national parliament at the same time, every five years. Currently, state elections do not need to coincide with national elections, leading to a situation where the country hosts one election or another every few months.
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Modi’s party also promises to maintain peace in the nation’s northeast, without mentioning the BJP-run and violence-torn state of Manipur where ethnic clashes have killed at least 220 people and displaced thousands. Many state residents say there is widespread disappointment over the inability of Modi’s government to end what critics have called a mixture of anarchy and civil war. Rahul Gandhi, Modi’s key rival from the Congress party, has repeatedly questioned Modi’s failure to visit the state despite the prolonged conflict.
Who is Narendra Modi?
Hannah Ellis-Petersen
There is little doubt among Indians that Narendra Damodardas Modi’s 10 years in power have already left an indelible mark on the country. To some it is the optimistic story of India rising to become the world’s fastest-growing economy, courted by powerful western leaders and multinational corporations; of efficient governance and technological advancements that have benefitted the public; and of the country freeing itself from the politics of elites and the “chains of colonisers” while reclaiming its historic Hindu civilisational greatness.
Yet to others it is a story of democratic backsliding and growing authoritarianism; of crony capitalism and a growing chasm between rich and poor; of the erosion of freedom of the media and judicial independence; attacks on secularism, liberal institutions and civil society; of publicly condoned Islamophobia and growing state-sponsored persecution of minorities, primarily India’s 200 million Muslims.
Such is the power of “brand Modi” that the BJP sits firmly in the shadow of its strongman leader. Modi’s face and name are attached to almost every government welfare scheme, and are visible on every government poster and even on people’s food rations and Covid vaccination certificates. The prime minister primarily refers to himself in the third person in speeches and will often address the people as “Modi ka parivar” [Modi’s family]. The party’s election manifesto was simply named “Modi’s guarantee”.
According to Modi’s biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, even as a child Modi displayed traits that would later define his political career. Recalling a conversation with one of Modi’s teachers from his time at school, Mukhopadhyay said: “Modi liked theatre a lot in school, but would only do leading roles. If he did not have the main role, he would not perform in that play. It’s a small glimpse into how he has always put himself at the centre of his own universe.”
Modi was born in 1950 in a small town in northern Gujarat, as the third of six children, to a poor, lower caste family. Growing up, their house did not have electricity and his father produced cooking oil and ran a small tea shop next to the local railway station.
It was as an eight-year-old child that Modi first wandered into the offices of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the rightwing Hindu paramilitary organisation that has worked for almost a century to push India towards becoming a Hindu state.
To this day, over six decades on, RSS ideology remains the foundation of Modi’s political beliefs and his agenda as prime minister. Under his two terms, militant Hindu nationalism has become the dominant political ideology in India, while core RSS policies have been brought to fruition and RSS figures are present in almost all main institutions.
Critics of Modi and the BJP say his government has become increasingly authoritarian, fracturing the country along religious lines and threatening India’s secular democracy. At the same time, the space for freedom of speech has been shrinking while disinformation and hate speech has exploded on social media.
The Guardian’s video team travelled through India to explore how fake news and censorship might be shaping the outcome of the election:
An hour into the count: BJP-led bloc leading in 272 seats
Just under an hour into the count the bloc led by Modi’s BJP is leading in 272 seats to the opposition INDIA bloc’s 178 seats.
Modi has set a target for the NDA bloc, led by the BJP, of winning 400 of the 543 seats, well over the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution.
While it is unlikely that the opposition INDIA bloc will win a majority, it will be hoping to win at least 181 seats to prevent a two-thirds majority for the NDA.
Heatstroke killed 33 Indian polling staff on last voting day: state election chief
At least 33 Indian polling staff died on the last day of voting from heatstroke in just one state, a top election official said Sunday, after scorching temperatures gripped swathes of the country.
While there have been reports of multiple deaths from the intense heatwave – with temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in many places – the dozens of staff dying in one day marks an especially grim toll.
The India Meteorological Department said temperatures at Jhansi in Uttar Pradesh reached 46.9C (116F).
Navdeep Rinwa, chief electoral officer for the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where voting in the seventh and final stage of elections ended Saturday, said 33 polling personnel died due to the heat.
The figure included security guards and sanitation staff.
“A monetary compensation of 1.5 million rupees ($18,000) will be provided to the families of the deceased,” Rinwa told reporters.
False information was detected across the political spectrum but the leader of the opposition Congress party, Rahul Gandhi, was one of the leading targets, AFP reports.
His statements, videos and photographs were shared on social media, but often incompletely or out of context.
Here are some examples, all widely shared by BJP supporters, according to AFP:
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One digitally altered video analysed by AFP used Gandhi’s real boast that the opposition alliance would triumph, but flipped it to say Modi would win a third term when the result is declared on Tuesday.
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Others purported to show Gandhi falsely appealing to people to vote for Modi.
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Among the more egregious examples were those falsely linking him to India’s rival neighbours, Pakistan and China. Those included a photograph that claimed Gandhi was waving the “Chinese constitution” during an election rally. It was in fact that of India.
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Other posts portrayed Gandhi, a Hindu, as being against India’s majority religion, capitalising on Modi’s efforts to cast himself as the country’s most staunch defender of the faith.
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One video of a ruined Hindu temple, a real image from Pakistan, was widely shared. However, the post falsely claimed it was from Gandhi’s constituency and that he was responsible for its destruction.
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Another manipulated video falsely showed him refusing to accept a statue of a Hindu god.
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Another claimed he was paying young people to support him on social media, when in reality he was talking about youth unemployment.
‘Unprecedented’ levels of disinformation
India’s six-week election was staggering in its size and logistical complexity, but also in the “unprecedented” scale of online disinformation, APF reports.
The biggest democratic exercise in history brought with it a surge of false social media posts and instant messaging, ranging from doctored videos to unrelated images with false captions.
Raqib Hameed Naik, from the US-based India Hate Lab, said they had “witnessed an unprecedented scale of disinformation” in the elections.
“Conspiracy theories… were vigorously promoted to deepen the communal divide,” said Naik, whose organisation researches hate speech and disinformation.
With seven stages of voting stretched over six weeks, AFP factcheckers carried out 40 election-related debunks across India’s political divide.
There were fake videos of Bollywood stars endorsing the opposition, as well as those purporting to show one person casting multiple votes. Some were crude or poked fun. Others were far more sinister and sophisticated productions aimed to deliberately mislead.
