Modi’s Central India Citadel Faces Religious Divide: India Votes

Each day, Bloomberg journalists take you across a selection of towns and cities as they gear up for the big vote.

Hello. I’m Ragini Saxena and I write about cars, bikes and planes from New Delhi. I grew up in Bhopal, a beautiful historic city and the capital of Madhya Pradesh in central India, known for its lakes and monuments. The city has elected a representative from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party in each of the last nine elections since 1989. Infamous for one of the world’s worst industrial disasters, caused by a gas leak at Union Carbide’s factory in 1984, Bhopal is a melting pot of cultures and art. Despite its rich heritage, the city of beautiful mosques and palaces has seen an erosion in communal harmony in the recent years, amid reports of Muslim homes being demolished and cow vigilantes killing men belonging to India’s indigenous tribes. Other key issue in the city and its nearby areas is the acute water shortage in summers, despite the dozens of lakes surrounding it.