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India
This Week in AsiaHealth & Environment

As India heads to polls amid 45-degree heat, fears mount over voters’ safety

  • India’s national weather service has forecast an abnormally hot April through June, coinciding with the country’s six-weeklong general election
  • Public health experts worry whether election rallies should go ahead, with polling stations urged to provide shade, fans and plenty of drinking water

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Women cover their faces to protect themselves from the heat as they arrive at a polling station in Rajasthan on Friday. Photo: Reuters
Kaisar Andrabi
Early on Friday morning, Ankush Jha and his wife Radika headed to a polling booth about 1.6 miles (2.6km) from their home in the northwestern state of Rajasthan to vote in India’s general election. The couple wanted to be among the first to cast their ballots.
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But Jha’s early arrival was motivated as much by his desire to avoid the midday heat as his eagerness to vote. During India’s last elections in 2019, he nearly fainted after waiting in a queue for four hours under the scorching sun.

“I thought it would be better to go and vote early to avoid the soaring temperatures because my wife and I have health issues, so we decided to go early and save ourselves from the unbearable heat we are witnessing,” Jha, 42, told This Week in Asia. “I was waiting for this day for weeks to cast my vote for my country.”

Millions of Indians began casting their ballots on Friday as the first phase of the country’s elections got under way. The vote will continue for the next six weeks and decide whether Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party secures a third term. Although the focus is on politics, another major factor affecting this year’s ballots will be the weather.

India’s Meteorological Department, the national weather service, warned earlier this month that temperatures from April until June would be abnormally hot across most of the country.

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Its forecast comes amid recent warnings from the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization that 2024 is likely to be even hotter than last year, already planet Earth’s warmest year on record and India’s second-hottest.
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