BIJAPUR: Voters defied threats from India’s Maoist rebels on Monday to turn out for the first of five state elections that will test the popularity of opposition leader Narendra Modi before national polls next year.

Chhattisgarh state, a resource-rich hotbed of left-wing extremism, was under tight security for the first of two phases of voting in which the national opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is seeking a third term in power. Modi, a hard-line Hindu nationalist, has campaigned in Chhattisgarh and is hoping a string of contests over the next month will boost his momentum and favorable ratings over his national rival Rahul Gandhi.

Gandhi, the 41-year-old scion of his family’s political dynasty, trails in the polls and is struggling to fire up his Congress party which has been in power since 2004 at national level.

Parliamentary elections in the world’s biggest democracy must be held before May, with Congress battered by a mix of high inflation, slowing economic growth and a series of corruption scandals.

Maoists have called for a boycott of the state polls in Chhattisgarh and have been intimidating voters in remote rural areas, police say, where the local mostly tribal population is caught in a vicious cycle of violence.