New Delhi: India’s most populous state Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls on Saturday in a contest seen as a key test for Narendra Modi halfway into his first term as prime minister.

Uttar Pradesh is home to over 200 million people — more than the entire population of Brazil — and polls there are a bellwether of national politics.

Voting started at a slow pace in the 73 assembly constituencies in western Uttar Pradesh on Saturday morning. The turnout in the first hour was poor with mostly youngsters seen casting their ballots.

Polling was delayed due to technical snags in electronic voting machines (EVMs) at four polling stations — Sardhana, Baghpat, Hathras and Noida.

Four booth level officers (BLOs) did not turn up at Dayalbagh in Agra, delaying the polling by over 40 minutes, an official said.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates Shrikant Sharma and Sangeet Som cast their votes in their respective constituencies of Mathura and Sardhana.

Sharma is a BJP national spokesman and is contesting polls for the first time while Som is a controversial figure for his alleged role in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. He is also the incumbent legislator from Sardhana.

The maximum number of 26 candidates are contesting from Agra South, while there are six each from Hastinapur, Iglas and Loni.

Amid heightened fears of poll violence, heavy security deployment was made in sensitive areas — Shamli, Aligarh, Muzaffarnagar, Mathura, Bulandshahr and Agra.

In all, 826 companies of central forces were stationed for the first phase of polling.

In the 2012 assembly polls, of the 73 seats — Samajwadi Party had won 24 seats, Bahujan Samaj Party 23, BJP 12, Rashtriya Lok Dal nine and Congress five seats.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had won all the 12 seats here.

There are 2.59 crore voters who are exercising there franchise on Saturday of which 1.42 crore are men, 1.17 crore women and 1,511 from the third gender.

This time they are also being seen as a referendum on Modi’s controversial ban on high-value notes, a move aimed at combating tax evasion by the rich that has also hit poor rural communities hard.

The northern state voted overwhelmingly for Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 general election, powering him to victory over the Congress Party that has dominated Indian politics since independence.

This time around the BJP faces a major challenge from the youthful and charismatic current Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, running in an alliance with Congress.

‘The government will be judged on the popularity or lack of popularity of its demonetisation policy in India’s most populous state,’ said Ashok Malik, a fellow with think-tank Observer Research Foundation.

‘There will also be other factors at play in these state polls, but Modi’s BJP will be judged in comparison to its performance in the state in 2014.’

Voting will be staggered over several weeks, with results out on March 11, and pollsters put the BJP neck and neck with Yadav’s Samajwadi Party and Congress.

Congress, whose 46-year-old likely next leader Rahul Gandhi has campaigned alongside Yadav, desperately needs a win after a dismal performance in 2014.

Both Modi and Gandhi — scion of the family that has dominated the party for generations — have their seats in Uttar Pradesh, underscoring the importance of the electorally pivotal state.

Malik cautioned against discounting Mayawati, a low-caste leader known as the ‘Dalit Queen’ whose Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was once seen as unassailable in the state.

With so much at stake, Modi has personally led the campaigning for his party.

But some observers said the BJP’s failure to put forward a local face could backfire, as it did in the neighbouring state of Bihar in 2015.

‘If it loses UP, it will be this factor that killed its hopes,’ said journalist R. Jagannathan in an opinion piece for the Times of India daily.

‘The electorate knows it will get Akhilesh Yadav as chief minister if the SP-Congress coalition wins, but it is not sure what will emerge from the black box if BJP wins.’