Voting has begun in a local election in Karnataka, India’s southern tech hub, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the opposition Indian National Congress are seeking control of a state seen as a strategic prize one year ahead of a national poll.

The state, one of India’s richest per capita and the centre of its information technology industry, is the only one in the country’s more prosperous south held by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party, whose main power base is in the north.

Congress candidates have seized on alleged corruption in the state to accuse Karnataka’s BJP government of “looting” money while in power. Modi has hit back by deriding the powerful Gandhi dynasty that dominates the opposition party as a “royal family”. He has also trumpeted the value of having a “double engine” BJP government in the state capital Bengaluru and national capital New Delhi.