India's six-week election ends; Modi's alliance set for win, exit polls project

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked set to win a third straight landslide election victory on Saturday (Jun 1) at the close of a six-week general election bedevilled by searing heatwaves.

Results will be formally announced on Tuesday but Modi's victory has long been treated as a foregone conclusion by analysts, in large part due to his aggressive championing of India's majority faith.

Exit polls showed he was well on track to triumph and Modi himself was certain he had prevailed, saying he was confident that "the people of India have voted in record numbers" to re-elect his government.

"They have seen our track record and the manner in which our work has brought about a qualitative change in the lives of the poor, marginalised and downtrodden," he said on social media platform X. An exit poll from broadcaster CNN-News18 forecast Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its coalition allies to win 355 seats, well above the 272 needed for a majority in the lower house.

However, such forecasts have proven unreliable in the past at capturing public sentiment in a country with nearly a billion eligible voters.

Many in Modi's constituency of Varanasi who cast their votes on Saturday were nonetheless excited at the prospect of his return to power.

"I voted for growth and development of my country," Varanasi resident Brijesh Taksali told AFP outside a polling station where he cast his

Varanasi is the spiritual capital of the Hindu faith, where devotees from around India come to cremate deceased loved ones by the Ganges

river. 

It was one of the final cities to vote in India's long election, and where public support for Modi's ever-closer alignment of religion and politics burns brightest.

Earlier this year, Modi presided over the inauguration of a grand temple to the deity Ram, built on the grounds of a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya razed by Hindu zealots in 1992.

Construction of the temple fulfilled a long-standing demand of Hindu activists and was widely celebrated across the country with back-to-back television coverage and street parties.

The ceremony and numerous other chest-beating demonstrations of fidelity to India's majority religion over the past decade have made many among the country's 200 million-plus minority Muslim community increasingly uneasy about their futures.

Modi himself has made a number of strident comments about Muslims on the campaign trail, referring to them as "infiltrators".

He has also accused the motley coalition of more than two dozen opposition parties contesting the poll against him of plotting to redistribute India's wealth to its Muslim citizens.

Janesar Akhtar, a Muslim clothesmaker working in Varanasi's famed embroidery workshops, told AFP that the BJP's sectarian campaigning was an unfortunate distraction from India's chronic unemployment problems.

"Workshops here are closing down and the Modi government has been busy with the politics of temples and mosques," the 44-year-old said.

"He is supposed to give us jobs and not tensions."