Some 970 million people are summoned to the ballot boxes in 543 constituencies. The process, which begins on April 19, will last 44 days, until June 1, results are expected on June 4.

Polls and analysts give the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Hindu nationalist party of the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, as the comfortable winner. The opposition denounces being the victim of political persecution by state institutions and warns of the risk that constitutional secularism could be compromised in the name of Hinduism if the BJP wins again. The party obtained only 50 deputies in 2019, and Rahul Gandhi was expelled from Parliament in 2023, after being condemned for calling the prime minister a 'f****** Hindu.' The party would command a coalition, the National Democratic Alliance, with a hyper-qualified majority of more than 400 seats, which would give him room to undertake reforms with hardly any counterweights, writes Ravi Agrawal, an expert on Indian politics. Harsh Vardhan Shringla, former Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs between 2020 and 2022, is close to the formation of the BJP. He assures that his success is due to numerous factors that begin with Modi's own leadership. He cites everything from the millions of people who have left poverty (almost 250 million in the last nine years, according to NITI Aayog, a government institute) to infrastructure projects. “In all areas there has been great development” and “many efforts to serve the most disadvantaged sectors, he says. But under the mantle of Modi's state visits, one can also perceive a discourse that has divided Indian society, says professor Apoorvanand Jha, a common voice among critics of the presidential Cabinet. Modi, he explains, came to power in 2014 with language that was already destined to divide the country, says Jha. The country has become a pivot, a kind of third way closer to the West in the face of the rise of China.