India election 2024 updates: Millions vote in third phase of Lok Sabha poll

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To read more about the third phase of India’s mammoth national election, you can access our explainer here. The fourth phase of the multiphase election will be held on May 13.

Please check our India election page for all the latest news and analyses.

We will be closing this live page soon. Here is a recap of today’s events:

• As of 3pm local time (09:30 GMT), voter turnout was around 51 percent, with the highest recorded in the state of West Bengal, and the lowest in the western state of Maharashtra.
• Prime Minister Modi cast his vote in Gandhinagar constituency where his number two, Home Minister Amit Shah, is the BJP candidate.
• Congress party’s former President Sonia Gandhi says Modi and his BJP are promoting “hatred for political gain”, adding that their focus is “only on gaining power at any cost”.
• Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav says he hopes India’s election body will take action against complaints of booth capturing by the workers of the governing BJP, according to the India Today network.
• An Indian court extended the pre-trial detention of opposition leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal until May 20.

Two people were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir during a firefight with Indian soldiers, police said, at a time when campaigning for the national election is under way in the disputed territory.

Soldiers besieged a residential area in southern Kulgam district, some 70km (43 miles) from Kashmir’s biggest city Srinagar, on Monday after armed fighters were suspected of sheltering in a house.

Two bodies “were recovered so far” from the site, police said in a statement on X.

Bodies of 02 #terrorists killed in the anti-terrorist operation recovered so far. Identity & affiliation being ascertained. #Operation in progress. Further details shall follow.@JmuKmrPolice https://t.co/qgOUVcI3gk

— Kashmir Zone Police (@KashmirPolice) May 7, 2024

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947, with both claiming the Himalayan territory in full.

Rebel groups opposed to Indian rule have for decades carried out a rebellion in Indian-administered Kashmir, demanding either independence or a merger with Pakistan.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and fighters.

Congress party’s former president says Modi and his party are promoting “hatred for political gain”.

“Today in every corner of the country, youth are facing unemployment, women are facing atrocities, Dalits, tribals, backward classes and minorities are facing terrible discrimination,” Sonia Gandhi said in a video message posted by Congress.

“This atmosphere is due to the intentions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP. Their focus is only on gaining power at any cost.”

One of India’s most influential leaders, she is the widow of assassinated former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. She is also the party’s longest-serving president with 19 years at the helm, from 1998 to 2017, before handing over the baton to her son, Rahul, who quit the post in 2019.

#WATCH | Congress Parliamentary Party Chairperson Sonia Gandhi says, "Today in every corner of the country, youth are facing unemployment, women are facing atrocities, Dalits, tribals, backward classes and minorities are facing terrible discrimination. This atmosphere is due to… pic.twitter.com/8ik4UgEQw9

— ANI (@ANI) May 7, 2024

As of 3pm (09:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal was still in the lead with the highest voter turnout at 63.11 percent, ANI reports.

The western state of Maharashtra remained in last place with a 42.63 percent turnout.

The overall voter turnout stood at 50.71 percent.

50.71% approximate voter turnout was recorded till 3pm today in Phase 3 of #LokSabhaElections2024, as per Election Commission of India pic.twitter.com/b6RZVOeiyd

— ANI (@ANI) May 7, 2024

“We are not against Islam. We are not against Muslims. This is not our domain,” Modi told the broadcaster Times Now in an interview ahead of the third phase of voting.

“They [opposition] would vilify us as anti-Muslim and then would claim they are friends of Muslims. They gained through this. That is why they created this atmosphere of fear. They were reaping benefits by fearmongering. But the Muslim community is aware now,” the Indian prime minister said.

“The opposition’s problem is that their lies have been caught. That is why to mislead, they have to keep saying all kinds of lies.”

Modi asked the Muslims to “introspect”.

“The country is progressing, if your community is feeling deprived, what’s the reason for it? Why didn’t you get the benefits of government schemes when Congress was in government?” he said.

In an election rally in central India on Tuesday, he said India has reached a “turning point” in history and the people will have to decide whether “vote jihad” or “Ram Rajya” – the mythological kingdom of the Hindu god – will work in India.

“You have to decide whether ‘vote jihad’ will work in India or ‘Ram Rajya’ will.”

Lingneifel Vaiphei collapsed to the ground in agony after she saw the lifeless body of her infant child laid out on a cold steel stretcher in a mortuary in Chennai, the capital of India’s southern Tamil Nadu state.

Steven’s body was tightly wrapped in a striped woollen shawl, traditionally worn by the Kuki-Zo tribe in the northeastern Manipur state. His face had turned blue. He was only six months old.

Steven was born last winter in Chennai, nearly 3,200km (1,988 miles) from home in Manipur. Vaiphei and her husband Kennedy had moved to Chennai in search of a new start away from violence in Manipur.

The state has been in the grip of deadly ethnic clashes between the predominantly Hindu Meitei and the mainly Christian Kuki-Zo tribes for a year now.

The violence has not abated – making it one of India’s longest-running civil wars that has already claimed more than 200 lives and displaced tens of thousands of mainly Kuki-Zo people.

You can read more of this story here.

As of 1pm (07:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal was still in the lead with the highest voter turnout at 49.27 percent, the ANI news agency reports.

The western state of Maharashtra continued to be in last place with a 31.55 percent turnout.

The overall voter turnout stood at 39.92 percent.

39.92% voter turnout till 1pm for phase 3 of #LokSabhaElections2024

Assam 45.88%
Bihar 36.69%
Chhattisgarh 46.14%
Dadra & Nagar Haveli And Daman & Diu 39.94%
Goa 49.04%
Gujarat 37.83%
Karnataka 41.59%
Madhya Pradesh 44.67%
Maharashtra 31.55%
Uttar Pradesh 38.12%
West… pic.twitter.com/VrP4RHQjUA

— ANI (@ANI) May 7, 2024

Deep inside the protected Gir forest in Gujarat state, Hindu monk Mahant Haridas Udaseen has cast his ballot, ensuring a 100 percent turnout at the polling station where he is the sole registered voter.

The forest is the last remaining natural habitat of the endangered Asiatic lion.

“The fact that a team of 10 people came here in the jungle for just one voter shows how important each vote is,” the 42-year-old monk told AFP, holding up a finger marked with indelible ink to show he had voted at the booth in Banej, where he is the sole resident.

Electoral laws demand that each voter is no more than 2km (1.2 miles) away from a polling booth. For polling officers, that meant a two-day trip, including a long and bumpy journey by bus on unpaved forest roads.

“In a democracy, every single person is important,” said Padhiyar Sursinh, the presiding officer in Una, a town 65km (40 miles) from Banej.

Speaking to a saffron-clothed crowd of supporters in his home state of Gujarat, the Indian prime minister turned to an increasingly favoured electoral theme – how opposition parties are collaborating with Muslims to plot a takeover of the nation.

“[The opposition alliance] is asking Muslims to do ‘vote jihad’. This is new because we have so far heard about ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’,” said Modi, referring to a string of Islamophobic conspiracy theories, before emphasising to his audience why they needed to be fearful.

“I hope you all know what the meaning of jihad is and against whom it is waged.”

Modi’s rhetoric against Muslims is worrying analysts and even Muslims who fear it could lead to violence against them.

Read more of this story here.

The BJP relies heavily on Modi’s popularity, with his image adorning everything from sacks of rice handed out to the poor to large posters in cities and towns. However, some voters say that is not enough.

“Yes, the government gives us free rice, but what’s the point?” 50-year old Rina Kathar from Baligate in the northeastern state of Assam told Reuters news agency.

“Look at the cost of potatoes and onions. It was never so high before.”

An Indian court has extended the pre-trial detention of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal until May 20, legal news website Live Law reported.

The country’s financial crime-fighting agency arrested Kejriwal – a staunch Modi critic – on March 21 in connection with corruption allegations relating to the liquor policy of Delhi state, charges his party has denied. He has been in pre-trial detention since April 1.

Earlier, we reported that India’s Supreme Court is also hearing a bail petition from the Aam Aadmi Party leader.

Ankit Soni, a voter in Gujarat state’s Nadiad town, lost both his hands due to electric shock 20 years ago.

He cast his vote through his feet at a polling booth in Nadiad. “I appeal to people to come out and vote,” he told India’s ANI news agency.

#WATCH | Nadiad, Gujarat: Ankit Soni, a voter, casts his vote through his feet at a polling booth in Nadiad

He says, "I lost both my hands due to electric shock 20 years ago. With the blessings of my teachers and guru, I did my graduation, CS… I appeal to people to come out… pic.twitter.com/UPx8G5MTPz

— ANI (@ANI) May 7, 2024

Three of Indian-administered Kashmir’s five seats are majority Muslim and held by the opposition.

But the BJP hopes to swing one of them, Anantnag-Rajouri, after its voter rolls swelled by almost 50 percent to more than two million due to delimitation, or redrawing of constituencies, according to government data.

Many of the new voters are Hindus or from regional tribes, which benefitted from new BJP policies awarding them education and employment privileges.

Regional BJP chief Ravinder Raina said the party would support an alliance partner that it believed could win Anantnag-Rajouri and focus on retaining the two Hindu-majority seats it holds.

The two redistricting exercises presage a broader remapping of constituencies due after the ongoing election.

Milan Vaishnav, an expert on South Asian politics at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, said the remapping would distribute seats to the BJP-dominated north India, which has much higher population growth rates, to the detriment of wealthier southern India.

The BJP-led alliance is hoping for gains in the northeastern state of Assam, where it won nine of 14 seats in 2019. Assam’s BJP chief minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma, said in March he was confident of winning 13 seats.

The BJP’s confidence is rooted in a 2023 redistricting exercise in the state, called delimitation, which refers to the Election Commission routinely redrawing seat boundaries to reflect population changes.

But the delimitation since the 2019 election in Assam – where Muslims constitute more than 34 percent of its 35 million population – diluted the Muslim vote in seats that the BJP alliance is targeting.

In Congress-held Barpeta, the exercise added dozens of villages and some towns with large Hindu populations to the constituency.

“Earlier [Barpeta] had a Muslim majority but now it is a Hindu majority,” said BJP alliance candidate Phani Bhushan Choudhury. “That change has worked in my favour.”

Choudhury’s Congress opponent Deep Bayan said the percentage of Hindus in Barpeta went from 30 percent to 70 percent. “Instead focusing on real issues affecting the people … [the BJP does] the politics of polarisation,” he said.

Ever since he can remember, Rohit Kumar Sahu knew he wanted to go to college and get a well-paying, white-collar job. His father delivered courier packages across the eastern Indian city of Ranchi on a bicycle, and Sahu had no idea how to realise his dream.

He signed up for a job with the food delivery app Zomato, thinking this could be his path to earning money to pay for college fees. Sahu began with just a few hours of work so he could attend college alongside his job, but he could’t make enough deliveries on his bicycle – and that meant he couldn’t earn much.

Sahu is among a growing number of Indians bearing the brunt of the increasing informalisation of work in India.

The India Employment Report 2024, a study released in March by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Institute for Human Development, says that India’s workforce is getting more informalised and that the quality of employment has suffered especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read more of this story here.