Voting in India's six-week general election, a national referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 10-year rule, ended on Saturday as scorching heat swept across much of the country's populous north.
The results will be tallied and announced on Tuesday.
Modi is firmly entrenched in power and is seen as likely to be elected to a third consecutive term as prime minister, becoming just the second leader to achieve that feat in India's nearly 75 years as a republic.
But a newly united opposition has rallied and is fighting against Mr. Modi's divisive politics and his management of India's highly unequal economic growth. The country will now watch to see whether the opposition can achieve its goal of slashing a significant number of parliamentary seats held by Mr. Modi's Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The election, which will be held in stages over a month and a half, is the world's largest democratic election with more than 950 million eligible voters. Mass rallies were held in the final stages of the campaign amid scorching heat in north India, with temperatures often exceeding 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius).
At least 19 poll workers have died from heatstroke and other health complications caused by the heat in recent days.
Elections in a parliamentary system like India's are typically fought seat-by-seat, with candidates' fates determined by local economic and social factors. But the BJP turned the 543-seat assembly election into a national referendum akin to a presidential election, focused almost entirely on Mr. Modi and his leadership. The party hoped that Mr. Modi's enduring popularity would help it overcome growing anti-incumbency sentiment after a decade in power.
Mr. Modi held some 200 rallies across the country over more than two months of campaigning to promote his party's struggling candidates and also launched a media blitz, giving some 80 interviews to television channels and newspapers, most of which were favorable.
When the campaign ended and a two-day election recess began, Modi retreated to the south, home to India's most famous Buddhist monk's memorial, for two days of meditation. The national media followed suit, with a series of videos and photos released by his office, taken from multiple angles in areas where photography is normally banned, dominating the evening news and television debates.
Modi's opponents denounced the move as tantamount to banned election campaigning and said it symbolized the uneven playing field he has created.
“The weather is fine. The prime minister is meditating there and propitiating the sun goddess,” actor and BJP candidate Ravi Kishan told local media. “This is historic. After scorching heat, the wind has started blowing today.”
The opposition, hamstrung by arrests and punitive measures as part of a crackdown, has nevertheless mustered its most united front in years. Opposition leaders portrayed Modi as a friend of billionaires fighting to create jobs for the country's large young population. They called the party elitist and accused it of failing to uplift the middle and lower stratum of India's caste system.
Opposition parties have stoked fears that if the BJP remains in power, it could amend India's constitution to repeal affirmative action systems for middle and lower castes that were introduced decades ago to address centuries of oppression in India's rigid class society.
Modi has vehemently denied the allegations as baseless and his party has stepped up outreach to lower-caste Muslims, turning to anti-Muslim rhetoric and making some of the most direct attacks in recent years in an attempt to unite his Hindu base.
Opposition parties have also tried to garner voters with a long list of welfare promises, including loan waivers for farmers, cash transfers for women and paid apprenticeships for young people. But Mr. Modi has maintained an image of fiscal caution and has emphasized only what he already has in place, because he is confident of a third term and has been reluctant to overpromise, party members say.
But even as the opposition appears to be gaining some momentum, it faces an uphill task in toppling Modi's government, which has a powerful and well-funded political machine that has given it a huge electoral advantage: In the last election, Modi's party won 303 seats, nearly six times as many as its nearest domestic rival, the Indian National Congress.
Pragati KB Reporting from Kanyakumari, India.