India's Six-Week Election Process Comes to an End

TIME

India has close to 970 million voters among its more than 1.4 billion people. The final day of voting in the 6-week-long election was Saturday. The vote counting will start Tuesday and will be updated throughout the day.

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00:00 India's six-week long election is almost over.

00:03 The last of its voters went to the polls over the weekend amid a brutal heatwave in many

00:08 parts of the country.

00:09 Now everybody is watching out for the results.

00:12 On Tuesday, India's election commission will start counting hundreds of millions of votes

00:17 which were cast electronically.

00:19 The country has a first-past-the-post electoral system, which means the candidate who receives

00:24 the most number of votes wins.

00:26 Nearly 970 million people were eligible to vote.

00:30 Official data shows that the turnout so far has been around 65%.

00:34 Now the final result may come only late on Tuesday, but we'll start to see leads emerge

00:39 earlier on, which could give an idea of where the results are headed.

00:42 In the lead-up, most polls have shown Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata

00:47 Party leading over their opposition, which is a broad alliance of many political parties

00:52 led by the Congress party.

00:54 Since 2014, Modi has consolidated votes amongst India's Hindu-majority population on a platform

01:00 of Hindu nationalism and economic development.

01:03 Now as he seeks a third straight term, experts say this election is a referendum on Modi's

01:09 decade in power and will test the limits of his popularity.

01:13 Modi has overseen rapid economic growth and helped turn India into a rising global power.

01:19 But his tenure has also been marked by rising unemployment, attacks against minorities,

01:24 and a shrinking space for dissent and free press.

01:27 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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