Electorate of 142 million voters in 20 states will choose their representatives in the first phase of mammoth elections.
Indians are voting in the first phase of mammoth general elections, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a second term.
The first phase covers an electorate of 142 million voters across 20 states, who will decide the fate of 91 candidates. Almost 900 million of India’s 1.3 billion people are eligible to vote.
Raziul Nasir, 53, an accountant at a construction company, said he was worried about his children’s future. “All I want is that people who are spreading hatred should be defeated,” Nasir told Al Jazeera.
Naresh Kumar, a 43-year-old voter in Bishada village of Dadri in Gautam Buddha Nagar constituency, said he wanted the BJP to return. Bishada witnessed India’s first cow-related lynching in 2015 that caused an outcry.
“Modi has done a lot of work,” Kumar, who works for National Thermal Power Corporation in Dadri, told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera’s Nadim Asrar, reporting from Noida, a suburb of New Delhi, said voters were turning out slowly.
“There’s a slow but steady trickle of voters at a polling booth in a middle-class neighbourhood of Noida. Security personnel guard the gates of a community centre where the polling is being conducted.”
Eight constituencies in western Uttar Pradesh saw over 11 percent voting until 9am.
Shailendra Pratap Singh, Additional District Magistrate of Ghaziabad adjoining Noida, told Al Jazeera that the voting is going on smoothly in the constituency. “Generally there is brisk voting either in the morning or between 4 and 6 pm,” he said.
Polls are also being held in the disputed Kashmir region and Chhattisgarh, which have faced armed rebellion.
Modi, 68, is the front-runner but he faces a tough challenge from Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition Congress party, who has attempted to capitalise on the Modi government’s poor record on jobs and rural poverty.
