UP election result: Follow counting in India state polls

More than 180 million votes in five Indian states are being counted to determine who will form the local government in each of these states.

Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Manipur and Goa all went to the polls over the past month.

India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is the main contender in at least four of the five contests.

Rising unemployment, high inflation and the BJP's Hindu majoritarianism are among the dominant issues.

Of the five states, Uttar Pradesh - which is India's largest state by population - is key. It's an important state for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP - he himself has campaigned here numerous times in these elections. It is also considered a bellwether state for India's parliamentary elections, due next in 2024. The BJP is currently in power in UP, where it won 312 seats of the 384 it contested in 2017.

In Punjab, a rich agrarian state, exit polls have predicted a win for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which governs capital Delhi. It would be a huge victory for a party that has long tried to establish itself a political player outside of Delhi. The Congress party is currently in power here, but infighting saw the departure of veteran leader and two-time chief minister, Captain Amarinder Singh. He is now contesting the elections as a BJP ally.

The Himalayan state of Uttarakhand has alternated between the Congress and the BJP since its creation in 2000. The BJP won a thumping majority in 2017, getting 57 out of the assembly's 70 seats. But there have been three chief ministers in the past five years.

The north-eastern state of Manipur has been witness to an often bloody separatist movement - and the Indian army has been accused of using excesses against civilians, an allegation it denies. In the last polls in 2017, the Congress was the single largest party - it had 28 seats of the state's 60 seats - but the BJP, which won 21 seats, formed the government by tying up with two local parties.

Goa has often seen elections end in hung assemblies - so lawmakers often jump parties as rivals try to woo them to get enough seats to cross the halfway mark. A BJP-led government has ruled the state for the past 10 years.