BBC Online :
India’s general election will take place in seven phases between April and May, the Election Commission says.
Polls to elect a new Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament, will be held from 11 April to 19 May. Votes will be counted on 23 May.
With 900 million eligible voters, India’s election will be the largest the world has seen.
PM Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP will be battling the main opposition Congress and a host of regional parties.
Leaders of two powerful regional rivals have formed a coalition against the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and a key bellwether state.
The lower house has 543 elected seats and any party or coalition needs a minimum of 272 MPs to form a government.
Everything about Indian general elections is colossal – the Economist magazine once compared it to a “lumbering elephant embarking on an epic trek”.
This time, more than 900 million people above the age of 18 are expected to cast their ballots at a million polling stations.
The number of voters is bigger the population of Europe and Australia combined.
Indians are enthusiastic voters – the turnout in the last general election in 2014 was more than 66%, up from 45% in 1951 when the first election was held.
More than 8,250 candidates representing 464 parties contested the 2014 elections, nearly a seven-fold increase from the first election.
The dates on which voting will be held are 11 April, 18 April, 23 April, 29 April, 6 May, 12 May and 19 May. Some states will hold polls in several phases.
India’s historic first election in 1951-52 took three months to complete. Between 1962 and 1989, elections were completed in four to 10 days. The four-day elections in 1980 were the country’s shortest ever.
Elections in India are long-drawn-out affairs because of the need to secure polling stations.
Local police are seen to be partisan, so federal forces have to deployed. The forces have to be freed from their duties and moved all around the country.
India’s Centre for Media Studies estimated parties and candidates spent some $5bn (£3.8bn) for the 2014 elections. “It is not inconceivable that overall expenditure will double this year,” says Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the US-based think-tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Compare it to the $6.5bn that the US spent on the famously free-spending presidential and congressional elections in 2016, and you realise how costly India’s elections are.
Financing of political parties in India continues to be opaque despite the fact that they are forced to declare their incomes.
Last year, Mr Modi’s government launched electoral bonds, which allow businesses and individuals to donate to parties without their identities being disclosed.
Donors have given away nearly $150m in these bonds – and the bulk of it, according to reports, has gone to the BJP.
Indian woman are voting in large numbers. So much so, that more women are likely to vote than men this time around, the first time ever in a general election.
The vote gender gap has already shrunk – in 2014, the turnout of women was 65.3% against 67.1% for men.
In more than two dozen local elections between 2012 and 2018, the turnout of women was higher than men in two-thirds of the states. Political parties have begun treating women as a constituency and offering them more sops: education loans, free cooking gas cylinders, cycles for girls.
India’s general election will take place in seven phases between April and May, the Election Commission says.
Polls to elect a new Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament, will be held from 11 April to 19 May. Votes will be counted on 23 May.
With 900 million eligible voters, India’s election will be the largest the world has seen.
PM Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP will be battling the main opposition Congress and a host of regional parties.
Leaders of two powerful regional rivals have formed a coalition against the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and a key bellwether state.
The lower house has 543 elected seats and any party or coalition needs a minimum of 272 MPs to form a government.
Everything about Indian general elections is colossal – the Economist magazine once compared it to a “lumbering elephant embarking on an epic trek”.
This time, more than 900 million people above the age of 18 are expected to cast their ballots at a million polling stations.
The number of voters is bigger the population of Europe and Australia combined.
Indians are enthusiastic voters – the turnout in the last general election in 2014 was more than 66%, up from 45% in 1951 when the first election was held.
More than 8,250 candidates representing 464 parties contested the 2014 elections, nearly a seven-fold increase from the first election.
The dates on which voting will be held are 11 April, 18 April, 23 April, 29 April, 6 May, 12 May and 19 May. Some states will hold polls in several phases.
India’s historic first election in 1951-52 took three months to complete. Between 1962 and 1989, elections were completed in four to 10 days. The four-day elections in 1980 were the country’s shortest ever.
Elections in India are long-drawn-out affairs because of the need to secure polling stations.
Local police are seen to be partisan, so federal forces have to deployed. The forces have to be freed from their duties and moved all around the country.
India’s Centre for Media Studies estimated parties and candidates spent some $5bn (£3.8bn) for the 2014 elections. “It is not inconceivable that overall expenditure will double this year,” says Milan Vaishnav, a senior fellow and director of the South Asia Program at the US-based think-tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Compare it to the $6.5bn that the US spent on the famously free-spending presidential and congressional elections in 2016, and you realise how costly India’s elections are.
Financing of political parties in India continues to be opaque despite the fact that they are forced to declare their incomes.
Last year, Mr Modi’s government launched electoral bonds, which allow businesses and individuals to donate to parties without their identities being disclosed.
Donors have given away nearly $150m in these bonds – and the bulk of it, according to reports, has gone to the BJP.
Indian woman are voting in large numbers. So much so, that more women are likely to vote than men this time around, the first time ever in a general election.
The vote gender gap has already shrunk – in 2014, the turnout of women was 65.3% against 67.1% for men.
In more than two dozen local elections between 2012 and 2018, the turnout of women was higher than men in two-thirds of the states. Political parties have begun treating women as a constituency and offering them more sops: education loans, free cooking gas cylinders, cycles for girls.
