India election 2024 updates: Delhi votes in Phase 6 of Lok Sabha polls

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To read more about the sixth phase of India’s mammoth national election, you can access our explainer here. The seventh and final phase of the election will be held next Saturday, June 1.

Meanwhile, 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 5pm (11:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal was leading with the highest voter turnout at about 77.99 percent, the ANI news agency reports.
• The northern Uttar Pradesh state, India’s most populated, was in the last place with 52.02 percent turnout. The overall turnout till 5pm stood at 57.7 percent, the agency said.
• Mehbooba Mufti, former chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, claimed many of her People’s Democratic Party workers were detained by the police to prevent them from voting. Mufti is contesting from the region’s Anantnag-Rajouri district.
• Prominent opposition politician Arvind Kejriwal, arrested in March, urged people to “vote against dictatorship”. On May 10, India’s Supreme Court granted Kejriwal temporary bail to allow him to campaign in the election.
• The Congress party reminded people that their vote “will not only improve your life but will also protect democracy and the Constitution”.

As of 5pm (11:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal was leading with the highest voter turnout at about 78 percent, the ANI news agency reports.

The northern Uttar Pradesh state, India’s most populated, was in the last place with 52.02 percent turnout. The overall turnout till 5pm stood at 57.7 percent, the agency said.

With voter turnout in this election unexpectedly low, traditionally interview-shy Prime Minister Narendra Modi is spending more time with journalists than ever before.

Will the strategy help? Watch The Listening Post below to find out:

The temperature in Delhi hovered at about 42C (107.6F) but felt like 49C (120.2F) at 2pm (08:30 GMT), the weather department said, prompting many voters to question why polls were not held when the weather was “more conducive”.

At a school in the Trilokpuri area that was being used for polling, sheets and tarpaulin were strung up in the courtyard to provide shade to voters queuing up despite the heat.

“If we sit at home saying it is hot outside, who will vote?” housewife Bhuwneshwari Pillai, 32, fanning herself with a sheet of paper and mopping her brow with a towel, told Reuters news agency.

As of 3pm (09:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal was still leading with the highest voter turnout at about 70.9 percent, the ANI news agency reports.

The northern Uttar Pradesh state, India’s most populated, was in the last place with 43.95 percent turnout. The overall turnout till 3pm stood at 49.2 percent, the agency said.

Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge has urged people to vote for “unity, justice and important everyday issues”.

“Vote against the politics of hatred, slogans and diversion,” he posted on X.

“Today is the day when you will be able to protect the reservation of Dalits, tribals [Indigenous people] and backward classes. Today is the day when you will be able to defeat the unbridled power of dictatorship with the power of democracy. Because… if not now, then never!”

Dalits fall at the bottom of India’s complex caste hierarchy and have been historically persecuted.

As Modi and his BJP tried to defend their decade-long record of governance in the face of criticism from the opposition, they have also been accused by critics of promoting tropes that, for a long time, have been anti-Muslim dog whistles for the country’s far-right.

The opposition has accused Modi of hate speech against Muslims, and India’s election commission has sent a warning to the BJP party chief about the PM’s comments. Election laws do not allow the overt use of religion to garner votes. But Modi has denied that he engaged in hate speech.

Al Jazeera fact-checked four claims about Muslims – India’s largest religious minority, with a population of 200 million people – that have dominated the election discourse in recent days.

Check them out here.

The 2,900km (1,800-mile) journey from capital New Delhi to Kanyakumari in the south is one of the longest train rides in India, passing through cities, villages, scrub forests and deep ravines.

The 22-car Thirukkural Express appears to be a microcosm of India, carrying passengers from different social groups and religions and with wide-ranging ambitions and grievances – from migrants crammed into sweltering no-frills cars to well-heeled families luxuriating in air-conditioned sleeper cabins, and everyone in between.

Passengers can also be divided by their politics, a topic at the top of their minds as the world’s most populous country holds its mammoth general election, in which Modi is seeking a rare third term.

India’s economy has grown rapidly under Modi, but the strong-arm tactics he has deployed to push his Hindu-nationalist agenda have sharpened religious divisions in the country of 1.4 billion people – roughly 200 million of whom are Muslim – and raised fears of a slide from secular democracy towards religious autocracy.

You can read the photo story, including interviews with passengers from across India, here.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader, arrested earlier this year on corruption charges, has been the chief minister of Delhi three times.

Hailing from the northern Indian state of Haryana, the 55-year-old studied mechanical engineering at one of India’s premier educational institutions, the Indian Institute of Technology.

Kejriwal is a former bureaucrat and tax inspector who helped launch the AAP in 2012 to “rid the Indian political system and government of corruption and inefficiency”.

Kejriwal rose to political prominence after defeating three-term Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit in the 2013 assembly election. His first term as chief minister lasted just 49 days and ended in chaos when he quit over delays in the introduction of an anticorruption ombudsman he was pushing for.

In 2015, he was sworn in for a second term after his party won a historic mandate, reducing the BJP to just three seats. Kejriwal and his party repeated their landslide victory in 2020, winning 62 seats out of 70.

An unassuming bespectacled man always seen in unremarkable pants and shirt, the AAP leader is known as someone who appeals to an aspirational middle class. Kejriwal’s popularity in Delhi’s teeming slums rivals that of Modi, who has carved out an image as a man of the people.

Phase 6 voters are also participating in the legislative polls in the eastern state along the Bay of Bengal.

Residents will be casting votes on 42 seats out of a total of 147 seats in the state legislative assembly.

Earlier, other states such as Andhra Pradesh in the south, and Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh in the northeast also voted for their state assemblies alongside the Lok Sabha election.

The sixth phase of India’s mammoth election includes the capital, New Delhi, which has seen intense political drama in the run-up to the vote.

Watch our video report below:

Many people lined polling stations before the start of voting at 7am (01:30 GMT) 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.

However, 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 told The Associated Press.

As of 1pm (07:30 GMT), the eastern state of West Bengal was leading with the highest voter turnout at about 55 percent, the ANI news agency reports.

The capital, New Delhi, was in the last place with 34.37 percent turnout. The overall turnout till 1pm stood at 39.13 percent, said the agency.

#LokSabhaElections2024 | 39.13% voter turnout recorded till 1 pm, in the 6th phase of elections.

Bihar- 36.48%
Haryana- 36.48%
Jammu & Kashmir- 35.22%
Jharkhand- 42.54%
Delhi- 34.37%
Odisha- 35.69%
Uttar Pradesh-37.23%
West Bengal- 54.80% pic.twitter.com/1dIx326TPA

— ANI (@ANI) May 25, 2024

For more photos, click here.

Voters from eight states and federal territories are voting to decide the fate of 889 candidates in 58 seats, including all the seven constituencies in the national capital territory of Delhi.

The prominent candidates in the fray are Kanhaiya Kumar, a former student leader and fierce Modi critic, while Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan is seeking to enter the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Indian parliament, from Sambalpur in the eastern state of Odisha.

Read our detailed explainer on Phase 6 here.

Modi’s championing of India’s majority Hindu faith is at the heart of his popular appeal, but Ghosya Tahir says she and others are experiencing increasing discrimination under the BJP’s rule.

“We want peace and harmony,” the 34-year-old told AFP news agency in the national capital.

“Even the people who were good to us have started to avoid us because they think we are not good people.”