Residents of India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, have voted in the first phase of the seven-phase assembly elections expected to be a bellwether of the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Uttar Pradesh, a state of about 200 million people in India’s north, has long been a stronghold of the BJP, which has been accused of stoking Hindu nationalist sentiment that has resulted in violence against minority groups, particularly Muslims.
