NEW DELHI- Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on a spiritual breakSaturday as India’s acrimonious marathon election wound to a close afteralmost seven weeks awash with insults, violence and fake news.
On the eve of the seventh and final day of voting in the world’s biggestdemocratic exercise, local media reports said Modi, 68, would also spendsome time in a “mediation cave”.
Having addressed more than 140 election rallies across the country, Modiarrived on Saturday in Dehradun, the capital of the Himalayan state ofUttarakhand famous for its Hindu pilgrimage sites.
Modi’s hectic campaign which started in March has seen him address threerallies a day on average, criss-crossing the length and breadth of thegeographically diverse nation of 1.3 billion people.
From Dehradun, the Hindu nationalist premier travelled to Kedarnath and wasdue to go on to Badrinath to pay his respects at shrines dedicated to theHindu deity Lord Shiva.
But it was not all relaxation, with the premier also expected to reviewreconstruction projects after floods in Uttarakhand in 2013 killed some6,000 people.
Modi is seeking a second term from India’s 900 million voters after leadinghis right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power in 2014, with resultsdue on May 23.
Opinion polls, although unreliable, predict that the BJP may lose seatsthis time despite its formidable campaigning machine, meaning it might needa coalition to form a new government.
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His main rival is Rahul Gandhi, 48, of the Congress party, the scion ofIndia’s famed Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
The rival parties have thrown almost daily barbs at each other, accusingeach other of corruption, nepotism and fake nationalism.
As in previous elections, the polling has been marked by violence, mostrecently in West Bengal state where tens of thousands of security forceshave been deployed following street clashes between BJP and rivalsupporters of the regional Trinamool Congress party.
The gargantuan election has also seen a flood of “fake news”, includingphotoshopped images and edited video clips, with both main parties usinglegions of people to manage social media.
“The likelihood that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party wins a majority byitself is falling (10%, from 15% previously),” Eurasia Group, a politicalrisk consultancy, said Friday in a report. -APP/AFP
