It’s finally here. After months of campaigning, countless WhatsApp forwards, seven phases of voting and three days of feverish debate following the exit polls, India will finally begin counting votes. The Electronic Voting Machines will be turned on at 8 am and the numbers will come in through the day.
As always, you are likely to be inundated with information, from commentary on television to jokes on Twitter and wild speculation on WhatsApp. To make things easier, we give you six ways to follow the elections with Scroll.in.
- The Big Picture: At any given moment, this page will give you a snapshot of what the national scenario looks like, with numbers as they come in from the EVMs and links to the rest of our coverage.
- The Heartland Tracker: The BJP won a huge portion of its 283 seats in 2014 from just a handful of states in the ‘Hindi heartland’ and adjoining states. If it is to be as successful, it will have to retain the bulk of these seats. This tracker will tell you how things are panning out.
- The South Focus: The picture looks completely different from the South, where aside from Karnataka, the BJP is still a bit player. Get all the latest updates from the five southern states here.
- The East Focus: The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal and Odisha might end up being the story of this election, with the saffron party potentially depending on the region to add to its tally. Follow the results from the East here.
- The Key Fights: Indian elections are full of prominent personalities and occasionally direct electoral battles as well. This liveblog keeps track of the most significant races around the country to give you a sense of how these characters fare.
- The Election Fix liveblog: Looking beyond the minutiae, here you can get context and commentary from Scroll.in’s reporters who covered the elections from the ground over the last few months.