Modi favorite as giant election starts

Polls opened on Thursday in the first phase of India's general elections, seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party, as the scion of the Gandhi family told Indians that the country's "soul" was at stake.

Opinion polls put Modi as the favorite to win, but he faces a possible backlash from India's 900 million voters over unemployment and rural poverty, Agence France-Presse reported.

Because of India's vastness, Thursday marked just the first of seven phases in the election to take place from the tea plantations of Darjeeling to the slums of Mumbai to the tropical Andaman Islands, and everywhere in between.