India election 2019: Manohar Parrikar death restarts battle for Goa

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India has entered full election mode: voting is due to begin on 11 April, with the final ballot cast more than five weeks later on 19 May. Every day, the BBC will be bringing you all the latest updates on the twists and turns of the world's largest democracy.

The latest from the campaign trail

It's battle Goa all over again

What happened?

India's former defence minister, and sitting chief minister of Goa, Manohar Parikkar died on Sunday.

His death has prompted the main opposition Congress party to stake a fresh claim to the state government.

Why does this matter?

Although some may see the rush on the part of the Congress as a little tasteless, the party clearly wants to move before the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) names a new chief minister for the state.

Party president Amit Shah is meeting with state leaders to finalise who it is likely to be.

However, the composition of the Goa assembly is complicated.

When elections were held in February 2017, the Congress was actually the single largest party, winning 17 seats in the 40-member house, four seats short of a majority. But three of its members crossed over to the BJP, who had won 13 seats.

The party then proceeded to tie up with some smaller regional parties and independent candidates to form the government. This was seen as a massive victory for the BJP and an example of its crafty politics.

With Parrikar's death the number of BJP lawmakers in the house goes down to 11, as one of its other lawmakers had also died earlier. This is prompting the Congress to challenge the government. They complain that the governor of the state is refusing to see them however, and is acting like a "BJP office bearer".

Unless the Congress is able to woo away the independents and regional parties currently supporting the BJP, it is unlikely to succeed in its bid. But at least in terms of optics, the party may have decided it was a good time to remind voters in Goa and the rest of the country that they were in fact the party who won the most votes in the state.

Highlights from the last week:

But here are some of the stand-out moments:

• The week began with some concerns over the dates of the election, which had been announced the day before. Some people claimed that the way the election had been staggered over several states would unfairly benefit the ruling BJP, although others were quick to dismiss their worries as "rubbish".
• It also saw the official start of the main opposition Congress party's election campaign in the prime minister's home state of Gujarat. Priyanka Gandhi, the charismatic younger sister of party leader Rahul Gandhi, got on stage to make her first speech as a fully-fledged politician to mixed reviews.
• Also noteworthy was the fact that firebrand social activist Hardik Patel, who rose to fame challenging the prime minister in Gujarat, officially joined the Congress party and sat on stage next to national party leaders, although he did not address the crowd. The 25-year-old commerce graduate, who was not old enough to stand for election under India's rules until this year, first rose to political fame as the face of massive caste protests which rocked Mr Modi's state in 2015.

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• Women were front and centre of political agendas, with West Bengal leader Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress (TMC) announcing its candidate list, revealing 40% of them were women. This put pressure on other parties to follow suit.

Read all our latest election coverage

• The BJP retaliated by saying that they were in this position in the first place because India's first prime minister - and Mr Gandhi's great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru - was responsible for China having a security council seat in the first place. This didn't really find too many takers though, and was refuted by Congress leader and Nehru biographer Shashi Tharoor. It also gave rise to some jokes like this:

Other highlights included Narendra Modi bombarding Bollywood with democracy-loving tweets, Priyanka Gandhi's very first tweet and controversy over the alleged withholding of yet another jobs report by the government.

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What about the week before?

The election hadn't even been announced, but no one could have been unaware that it was coming: the BJP had placed adverts in 150 newspapers across the country extolling its successes over the last five years - all of which had to come to a stop on Monday, due to election rules.

How do the Lok Sabha elections work?

India's lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha, has 543 elected seats. Any party or coalition needs a minimum of 272 MPs to form a majority government.

Some 900 million voters - 86 million more than the last elections in 2014 - are eligible to vote at 930,000 polling stations.

Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) will be used at all polling stations. The entire process will be overseen by the Election Commission of India.

Who are the main players?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi who won a landslide victory in 2014 is seeking a second term for both himself and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

His main challengers are the main opposition Congress party led by Rahul Gandhi, and a consortium of regional parties called the Mahagathbandhan (which translates from the Hindi into massive alliance).

The Mahagathbandhan has seen some of India's strongest regional parties, including fierce rivals, come together.

This includes the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Dalit icon Mayawati, normally fierce rivals in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, which sends the most number of MPs to parliament.

The alliance also includes the Trinamool Congress which is in power in the state of West Bengal and Arvind Kejriwal whose Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) rules Delhi.

The aim of the alliance is to consolidate regional and anti-BJP votes, in order to oust Mr Modi from power.

Other regional players including Tamil Nadu's DMK and AIADMK and Telangana's TRS in the south are not part of the alliance, but are expected to perform well in their own states, which is likely to make them key to any coalition government.

When do I vote? The dates at a glance

11 April: Andhra Pradesh (25), Arunachal Pradesh (2), Assam (5), Bihar (4), Chhattisgarh (1), J&K (2), Maharashtra (7), Manipur (1), Meghalaya (2), Mizoram (1), Nagaland (1), Odisha (4), Sikkim (1), Telangana (17), Tripura (1), Uttar Pradesh (UP) (8), Uttarakhand (5), West Bengal (2), Andaman & Nicobar (1), Lakshadweep (1)

18 April: Assam (5), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (3), Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) (2), Karnataka (14), Maharashtra (10), Manipur (1), Odisha (5), Tamil Nadu (39), Tripura (1), UP (8), West Bengal (3), Puducherry (1)

23 April: Assam (4), Bihar (5), Chhattisgarh (7), Gujarat (26), Goa (2), J&K (1), Karnataka (14), Kerala (20), Maharashtra (14), Odisha (6), UP (10), West Bengal (5), Dadar and Nagar Haveli (1), Daman and Diu (1)

29 April: Bihar (5), J&K (1), Jharkhand (3), MP (6), Maharashtra (17), Odisha (6), Rajasthan (13), UP (13), Bengal (8)

6 May: Bihar (1), J&K (2), Jharkhand (4), Madhya Pradesh (MP) (7), Rajasthan (12), UP (14), Bengal (7)

12 May: Bihar (8), Haryana (10), Jharkhand (4), MP (8), UP (14), Bengal (8), Delhi (7)

19 May: Bihar (8), Jharkhand (3), MP (8), Punjab (13), Bengal (9), Chandigarh (1), UP (13), Himachal Pradesh (4)

23 May: Votes counted

Key: Date: State (number of seats being contested))

Find out exactly when you are voting by visiting the Election Commission of India's website