India election 2024 updates: Modi, rivals fight Phase 4 of Lok Sabha vote

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To read more about the fourth phase of India’s mammoth national election, you can access our explainer here. The fifth phase of the multiphase election will be held on May 20.

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:

• The fourth phase of voting had 96 seats up for grabs across nine states and the union territory of Indian-administered Kashmir.
• As of 3pm local time (09:30 GMT), the overall turnout stood at 52.60 percent, India’s ANI news agency reported.
• Voting was also held in the valley area of Indian-administered Kashmir for the first time since the multiphase election began on April 19.
• Main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party says a vote will not only “protect your democratic rights but will also change the fate of your entire family”.
• India’s Supreme Court dismisses plea seeking the removal of opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal as the chief minister of the national capital territory of Delhi. Kejriwal, a fierce Modi critic, was arrested a month before the election over corruption charges, which he denies.

India’s election is more than halfway through. Tens of millions have cast their ballots as candidates fiercely woo every vote.

Turnout is critical, say political analysts, and it has seen a dip compared to previous elections, adding concerns for the governing BJP.

Watch our report below:

As of 3pm local time (09:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal remains in the lead with the highest voter turnout at 66.05 percent, India’s ANI news agency reports.

Indian-administered Kashmir’s Srinagar seat was in last place with 29.93 percent turning out to cast their ballot, while the overall turnout stood at 52.60 percent, the report said.

In 2014, Modi swept to power with his BJP pitching him as an economic reformer who would root out corruption and rescue the aspirations of India’s middle class from the clutches of elites – as well as the hellscape of rising prices and unemployment.

Ten years later, as Modi contests a rare third term, the gap between rich and poor in India – already significant in 2014 – has widened into a canyon, economic researchers warn. India’s income and wealth inequality have become among the highest in the world, worse than in Brazil, South Africa and the United States, reveals a new study by the World Inequality Lab (WIL).

As India votes to choose its next government, the research in the recently published The Rise of the Billionaire Raj shows income inequality in the country is worse than it was under British colonial rule.

You can read more of this explainer here.

As of 1pm local time (07:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal was again leading with the highest voter turnout at 51.87 percent, India’s ANI news agency reports.

Indian-administered Kashmir was in the last place with 23.57 percent turnout, while the overall turnout stood at 40.32 percent, the report 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 couldn’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 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.

As of 1pm local time (07:30 GMT), the southern state of Andhra Pradesh had recorded a voter turnout of 40.26 percent, India’s ANI news agency reports.

In Odisha, 39.30 percent of people had turned up to cast their ballot by that time.

Voters in Andhra Pradesh and Odisha – two states along India’s east coast – are also voting today to elect representatives to their respective state assemblies.

In Andhra Pradesh, elections are being held on all the 175 assembly seats apart from the 25 parliamentary seats in the state.

In Odisha, voting is taking place on 28 of the 147 seats in the four-phase state legislative assembly election. The state is also polling in four of its 21 parliamentary seats.

Kompella Madhavi Latha, contesting from Hyderabad in southern India, has been seen in a video checking the identity cards of burqa-clad Muslim women and forcing them to remove their veil at a polling booth.

Officials said a case of intimidation and poll code violation could be registered against the BJP leader, who is pitted against prominent Muslim politician and four-time parliamentarian Asaduddin Owaisi in the key constituency in Telangana state.

It’s the first parliamentary election in Indian-administered Kashmir since Modi’s government cancelled the region’s partial autonomy in 2019. And for the first time in years, people aren’t boycotting the vote.

Modi says repealing the special status helped integrate the region with the rest of the country and brought peace and development after decades of separatist violence.

Why then has Modi’s BJP not nominated a candidate to contest the three seats in the Muslim-majority region?

Our panel of experts break down the issue:

Noor Ahmad Baba – retired political science professor at the University of Kashmir

Sunil Sethi – BJP’s chief spokesman in Kashmir

Radha Kumar – author and academic

Watch the video below:

It’s 2:45pm (09:15 GMT) in India and here is a recap of the Phase 4 polling updates so far:

• Voting is being held in the Muslim-majority valley area of Indian-administered Kashmir for the first time since the multiphase election began on April 19.
• Rahul Gandhi of the opposition Congress party reminds people that a vote will not only “protect your democratic rights but will also change the fate of your entire family”.
• Prominent Muslim politician Asaduddin Owaisi, contesting from the southern city of Hyderabad, says the BJP has fewer supporters after Modi’s recent “venomous” comments against Muslims.
• As of 11am (05:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal was leading with the highest voter turnout at 32.78 percent, the ANI news agency reported.
• The Supreme Court dismissed a plea seeking the removal of opposition leader Arvind Kejriwal as the chief minister of the national capital territory of Delhi, the Press Trust of India reported. Kejriwal, a fierce Modi critic, had been arrested a month before the election over corruption charges.

A scuffle broke out at a polling station in the southern state between a local politician and a voter in the city of Guntur, the Press Trust of India reports.

The news agency said Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party’s VS Shivakumar was seen in the video slapping an unidentified voter, who hit back as others in the booth tried to separate the two men.

Watch below:

As the world’s largest — and one of its most unequal — democracies votes in a mammoth national election, a new debate has gripped the campaigns of both Modi’s BJP and the opposition Congress.

At the heart of the political slugfest is the idea of a potential redistribution of wealth. But while the Congress has alluded to the need for some resources to be reallocated to traditional marginalised economic and caste-based communities, Modi has accused the opposition of plotting to hand over wealth from Hindu households to Muslims.

So what’s the controversy about, and what do economists say about the proposals for a relook at India’s wealth distribution?

Read our explainer here.

At a time when Modi’s government and its Hindu nationalist allies face allegations of rewriting history, turning the past into a political battleground for the future, Ruchika Sharma’s unconventional history lessons, laced with makeup and satire, are her attempt at setting the record straight.

With more than 200 YouTube videos in just over two years, the 33-year-old historian is building a growing audience: Her YouTube channel, Eyeshadow & Etihaas, has nearly 20,000 subscribers, while on X, where she amplifies the arguments she makes in her videos, she has 30,000 followers.

Read more about her here.