NEW DELHI, May 31, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Prime Minister Narendra Modi was
meditating on a rocky outcrop off India's coast on Friday in a final appeal
to his Hindu voter base as marathon national elections drew to a close.

Modi remains roundly popular and is widely expected to win a third term when
the poll concludes, in large part due to his cultivated image as an
aggressive champion of the country's majority faith.

Modi's decade in power has seen the leader engage in regular meditations,
fasts and temple visits to burnish his religious credentials, despite India's
secular constitution.

The 73-year-old arrived late Thursday at a monument to Swami Vivekananda, a
renowned 19th-century Hindu monk and philosopher, for his latest ritual.

Images published by Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) showed the
premier sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed and one arm clasping prayer
beads.

Local media reports said around 2,000 police and security personnel were
guarding the site in the southern state of Tamil Nadu for the two-day
meditation, which concludes Saturday on the final day of general election
voting.

Modi underwent a similar retreat immediately before his last election victory
in 2019, when he spent days meditating inside a cave in the Himalayan
foothills.

This year he presided over the inauguration of a grand temple to the deity
Ram, built on the grounds of a centuries-old mosque in Ayodhya razed by Hindu
zealots in 1992.

Construction of the temple fulfilled a longstanding demand of Hindu activists
and was widely celebrated across the country with back-to-back television
coverage and street parties.

The BJP and Modi are widely expected to win this year's election, which is
conducted over six weeks to ease the immense logistical burden of staging the
democratic exercise in the world's most populous country.