Indians Begin Voting in Regional Elections

Millions of Indian voters queued up Saturday in the states of Punjab and Goa, in India's north and west, as polls opened for the first in a series of five state-level elections. 
The five Indian states will elect new governments over the next five weeks, with voting kicking off in northern Punjab and Goa in the west. 
Some 160 million voters are eligible to cast ballots across the five states, in what's seen as the first big electoral test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party since his controversial move last year to scrap high-denomination currency notes. 
The five states are home to a fifth of the country's 1.25 billion people. 
Elections also will be held in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Manipur between February 11 and March 8, with vote-counting for all contests scheduled for March 11, the Election Commission said. 
The biggest test for Modi will be in India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh (UP), where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won big in the 2014 general election. 
The state is important because it sends the highest number of MPs to the upper house of parliament, where the BJP currently lacks a majority.

Source: QNA