NEW DELHI — India on Tuesday started counting votes from its staggered, six-week election that was seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade in power and was expected to give him a third term in office.
Exit polls by major television channels have projected a comfortable win for the Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies over a broad opposition alliance led by the Congress party and its main campaign leader, Rahul Gandhi.
Nearly 970 million people — more than 10% of the world’s population — were eligible to vote and turnout averaged 66%, according to official data. The tallying at counting centers in 543 constituencies could stretch well into the evening before final results are announced, though substantial leads are likely to emerge earlier.
Currently:
— What to know as votes are being counted
— The world’s largest election, in photos
— Voting ended Saturday in the election that’s a referendum on Modi’s decade in power
— A scorching heat wave killed 14 in India before the final phase of voting
— Modi touts India’s roaring economy, but many feel left behind.
Here’s the latest:
The counting of some 642 million votes cast in India’s election is being done at various locations around the country by government employees. Chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar said they were starting with postal ballots and then move on to combining the votes from India’s electronic voting machines.
The process is expected to be completed by the end of the day Tuesday.
India has close to 970 million eligible voters, and votes were cast at more than a million polling stations staggered over the last six weeks.
That brought the final phase into India’s hottest season, with temperatures higher than 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in some parts of the country, and Kumar said the election officials learned a valuable lesson.
“We should have completed the election at least one month before,” he said ahead of the start of the counting. “We shouldn’t have let it continue into so much heat.”
___
Follow AP election coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/global-elections