Millions vote amid heatwave alert in Phase 6 of India’s staggered election

Many people lined polling stations before the start of voting at 7am to avoid the blazing sun at the peak of summer.

Millions of Indians have voted in the penultimate round of a gruelling national election, with a combined opposition trying to stop Prime Minister Narendra Modi from winning a rare third consecutive term.

Many people lined polling stations before the start of voting at 7am (01:30 GMT) on Saturday to avoid the blazing sun later in the day at the peak of summer.

The temperature soared to 43 degrees Celsius (109.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the afternoon in capital New Delhi. India’s weather bureau this week issued a heatwave “red alert” for the city and surrounding states where tens of millions of people cast their ballots.

Lakshmi Bansal, a housewife, said while the weather was hot, people usually went out to shop and even attended festivals in such heat.

“This [election] is also like a festival, so I don’t have a problem voting in the heat,” Bansal said.

Nearly 970 million voters – more than 10 percent of the world’s population – were eligible to elect 543 members to the lower house of parliament for five years.

Saturday’s voting in 58 constituencies, including seven in New Delhi, completed polling for 89.5 percent of 543 seats in the lower house of parliament.

The voting for the remaining 57 seats on June 1 will wrap up the six-week election. The votes will be counted on June 4.

President Droupadi Murmu and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar were among the early voters. Opposition Congress party leaders, Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, also voted in New Delhi.

Mehbooba Mufti, a former chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, held a protest with her supporters on Saturday, claiming that