In the world's biggest democratic exercise, India has announced that it will vote in national elections from the 19th of April, with the polls to be held over several weeks. The Hindu Nationalist and incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi is strongly favored to win a third term. It's the world's largest democracy in which 198 million people are eligible to cast ballots. Here's the Chief Election Commissioner making the announcement.

We'll do it in seven phases, as was done last time. Seven phases. Phase one will start from 20th March notification, five days from now.

Our South Asia correspondence, Samira Hussain, is in New Delhi, where the announcement was made. I asked her how long it would take before we got the results.

This is the world's most populace country, and there are 198 million eligible voters in this 2024 election. Actually, it doesn't happen over one day. It It happens over several weeks. For this particular election, they've decided it's going to happen in seven phases, and in total, it will be about six weeks before we get the results. Now, the last day for polling in a few states, what they do is they divide the country into seven different areas, and different areas vote all at once. In terms of when we get the results, the big results day for everyone will be the fourth of June. It does take a long time to get pulse of the people in this country. But I wanted to know what are people thinking about when it comes to this election and what are some of the issues that really stand out? Have a listen.

I'm going I will vote for Modi and the BJP because no one stands out as a possible candidate from the opposition. The Modi government has not fulfilled any of their promises. He promised to help the farmers, but he hasn't. I will vote for the one who helps the poor.

Each and everyone, even if it's someone small, even if it's someone poor, someone who doesn't come from a solid background, each and everyone's rights should be heard. The lower segment of the society, they should also be Their vote should also have a validation.

Pollution problem which comes up every time. It's going on every year, and people with bronchitis, elderly people, young people. Everybody's suffering. Something needs to be done. We just cannot treat this as a vote bank and not do anything about Samira, we know that Prime Minister Modi is hoping for a third term.

Tell us a little bit about the state of the opposition and what chances they have to go up against him.

Look, a third term in office is what Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking. He has been in office now for a decade, and he has pretty much dominated the northern part of the country, the northern part of the country, what's called the Hindi Belt. It's been a difficult road for the main opposition party, the Congress Party. They have really tried to make inroads in different parts of the country, but they haven't been able to gain that much traction. Part of it has to do with the Prime Minister's BJP, his political party that has really has a stronghold on the country and in terms of disseminating information. But the other problem, of course, is the disorganization within this particular opposition party. That said, if you look at the country, although I mentioned that the Prime Minister really pretty much dominates the north part of the country, if you look at the south, there's a lot of regional parties that actually are able to keep the BJP at bay. So what we're going to see in these upcoming elections is certainly a push by the government to try and make inroads into the Southern parts of the country.

So it's really going to be an interesting election to watch. And look, we're talking about the world's most populous country, clearly evidence by the number of people around me now. And I think this is certainly an election that only people in the country are going to be watching, but it's certainly one that countries around the world will be keeping an eye on as well.