Indian state polls to test Modi’s popularity

Bloomberg

The first assembly polls after Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a landslide victory in national elections in May will take place in the states of Maharashtra, the country’s richest, and Haryana next month.
Voting will be held on October 21, while counting will take place on October 24, Sunil Arora, chief election commissioner, said at a press conference on Saturday.
Maharashtra has a total number of 288 seats in the Assembly while Haryana has 90 seats on which votes will be cast, according to the the Election Commission of India website.
Maharashtra, home to the country’s financial capital Mumbai, and the northern state of Haryana are both governed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, making the contests a test of his popularity. The elections are taking place at a time when economic growth has decelerated to a six-year low, capital investment has plunged and the unemployment rate surged to a 45-year high.
The elections also follow controversial moves by the Modi government to scrap seven decades of autonomy in Kashmir, the country’s only Muslim-majority region, and create a citizen’s registry in the northeastern state of Assam, which threatens about 1.9 million people with loss of their citizenship.
The main opposition Congress party has formed a pre-poll alliance with the Nationalist Congress Party to fight the incumbent BJP-led coalition in Maharashtra. Mumbai, a city of 18 million people, is home to companies such as Reliance Industries Ltd. and the Tata Group, India’s two main stock exchanges and the country’s film industry. It also has of India’s biggest slums.