Regional elections kicked off Thursday (February 10th) in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, a test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party platform amid high unemployment, inflation and Covid-19 pandemic.
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Uttar Pradesh has suffered from India's economic slowdown, and Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is keen to prove its influence in this flagship state of more than 200 million people - more than Brazil - in the north of the country.
A big win in Hindi-speaking Uttar Pradesh would bolster the BJP's position ahead of the 2024 national elections.
According to opinion polls, the BJP should retain a majority in the assembly of Uttar Pradesh, which has 403 members, which no party has done since 1985, and even improve its score.
This region sends more deputies to Parliament in national elections than any other state (80 of the 543 seats in the lower house).
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In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP is led by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a charismatic Hindu monk with sulphurous diatribes.
Shaved head, dressed in a saffron robe, Yogi Adityanath, 49, has been accused of stoking interfaith divisions to woo Hindu voters, who make up 80% of the state's electorate.
The ascetic confirmed his radical Hindu nationalist rhetoric during his campaign for re-election, and angered and feared the state's minority Muslim population (20%).
The BJP's main rival is the Samajwadi (socialist) party, led by Akhilesh Yadav, which is seeking to exploit the discontent generated by declining employment and high inflation since the pandemic hit the country in 2020. Keen to win back lost ground, the BJP promised that at least one member of each family would have a job and free electricity for farmers, a key electoral bloc.
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The ballot consists of seven rounds.
More than 22 million voters were expected to cast their ballots in the first round on Thursday for 58 state assembly seats.
The counting will take place on March 10 at the end of the process.
