Record turnout in India as 551m vote

NEW DELHI: Indians cast final ballots Monday in a record election that saw 551 million people vote over five weeks.
The final phase of voting in 41 constituencies ended at 6 p.m. local time.
As the stock market hit a new record high on hopes that Modi can jumpstart the flagging economy, analysts urged caution due to notorious forecasting failures in 2004 and 2009.
Attention earlier in the day had focused on the city of Varanasi where 63-year-old Modi was standing as a candidate and hoping for a crowning victory on the final day of voting.
In a video message, he paid tribute to the hundreds of thousands who “stood out in the scorching sun for hours to give strength to democracy” over the last five weeks.
He also praised Varanasi for “its peace, its goodwill and its unity.”
His decision to stand in Varanasi was seen as reinforcing his Hindu nationalist credentials during a campaign in which he steered clear of his customary hard-line rhetoric.
The four-times chief minister of the western state of Gujarat has campaigned on a pledge of clean government and development to revive the flagging economy after 10 years of left-leaning rule by the Congress Party.
But he remains a deeply polarising figure over allegations that he failed swiftly to curb deadly 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat which left at least 1,000 people dead shortly after he came to power there.
Anti-corruption champion Arvind Kejriwal from the new Aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party was also contesting and hoping to upset Modi, who has spent little time in the city as he campaigned across the country.
Varanasi, around 680 kilometers east of Delhi, has a large Muslim population.
Opinion polls show voters have turned against Congress over massive graft scandals, spiralling inflation and a sharp economic slowdown in the last two years.
Despite a decade of economic growth that has averaged 7.6 percent per year, a sharp slowdown since 2012 has badly hurt the party, run by the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty which has dominated post-independence politics in India.
The latest member of the famous bloodline, Rahul Gandhi, who is leading his first national campaign, has denied that the party is staring at almost certain defeat.
The Gandhi siblings, joined by their mother and party president Sonia, have hit back, accusing Modi of being dangerously divisive and prejudiced against the country’s 150 million Muslims.
Congress spokesman Shakeel Ahmed stressed that opinion polls had failed to predict a victory for his party and its allies in 2004, when they ousted a BJP-led coalition, and in 2009.