India Votes on Second Biggest Polling Day
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - The world's biggest election in India, which passed the halfway mark last week, has entered its second-biggest day of staggered polls, in which Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party is widely seen as the front-runner to be country's next prime minister.
In the multi-phase election, voters of 117 constituencies in the following 11 states and one Union Territory will cast their ballots: Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Puducherry.
Security measures were tightened in India's northeastern province of Assam to ensure safe and fearless environment for voters.
On Thursday morning, voters queued up outside polling booths in Guwahati city to exercise their franchise, Reuters reported.
The election has turned into a face-off between Rahul Gandhi, best known for his famous last name, and Modi, who has been lauded by Indian corporate leaders and foreign companies for his business-friendly policies and his Gujarat model.
BJP and its allies are set to win a narrow majority of the 543 parliamentary seats but fall short of the 272-seat mark needed for a majority, according to latest polls.
The ruling Congress party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, and its allies were forecast to win just 111 parliamentary seats in the poll. Congress faces a struggle to be re-elected after a decade in power due to public anger over the economic slowdown, high inflation and a string of corruption scandals.
Indian elections are notoriously hard to predict, however, due to the country's diverse electorate and a parliamentary system in which local candidates hold great sway and translating vote share into actual seats won is not always reliable.
