Recently around 33 Indian polling staff died on the last day of voting due to the heatstroke in just one state, says a top election official, after scorching temperatures gripped swaths of the country. Navdeep Rinwa, chief electoral officer for the northern state of Uttar Pradesh said that, where voting in the seventh and last stage of the election ended a few days ago, and due to the heat 33 polling personnel died. The figure included security guards and sanitation staff and A monetary compensation of 1.5 million rupees [$18,000] will be provided to the families of the deceased.
Since there have been reports of many deaths from the intense heatwave with temperatures more than 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in most places, within a day the dozens of staff dying marks an especially grim toll. Rinwa also mentioned a separate incident in which a man in the queue to vote in Ballia city lost consciousness and the voter was transported to a health facility, where he was pronounced dead upon arrival.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) recently said that Jhansi city’s temperatures reached 46.9C (116F) and the Indian media reports said that the heat index soared to an alarming 61C in Ballia. According to a newspaper report, around 58 people died due to heat exposure across the country, with deaths which were reported from neighboring Bihar, Odisha in the east and the central Madhya Pradesh states.
A few days ago, Bihar saw around 10 election-related deaths, and adding that the toll could increase, according to an official in Odisha, around nine people died due to heat, taking the death toll in two days to 54. Experts say when a person is dehydrated, extreme heat exposure thickens their blood which causes organ failures.
However, after many years of scientific research, they have found that climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more often, and more powerful. Meanwhile, exit polls recently predicted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will win a rare third consecutive term in office and is likely to be re-elected with a strong majority, getting more seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s Parliament. Almost a billion Indians were registered to vote in the massive seven-phase elections that were organized over six weeks and concluded a few days ago.
