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World’s largest election exercise

Nazeer Waris

The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the dates for the 18th Lok Sabha on Saturday i.e., March 17. Over 96 crore voters will be eligible to vote in this world’s largest democratic exercise to elect 543 members of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament.

With the bugle being sounded by the Election Commission, the Union Government has to begin working in silent mode i.e., not to make any policy decisions and avoid publicizing their schemes etc.

Numbers of voters in India is larger than all the people of Europe put together.

It is a massive exercise in that it is spread over 80 days and will be conducted in seven phases i.e., April 19 and 26, May 7, 13, 20, 25, and June 1.

The results would be announced on June 4. The ECI will deploy 5.5 million electronic voting machines at 1.05 million polling booths, some of which are located snowcapped mountains of Kashmir while others may be tucked away in forests and deserts.

Some are even in islands in the Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. Nearly 15 lakh persons will be mobilized during the 80 days to ensure peace and smooth conducts of elections.

There are a total of 2,660 registered political parties in India. But not all of them are recognized ones.

Only those parties who get 1% of total votes cast in a state are recognized parties in that state. Similarly, those parties that garner 1% of the total votes cast in a Lok Sabha election, are recognized national parties.

During the 2019 General Elections, as many as 36 political parties won seats to reach the Lok Sabha. Of these however, BJP was the largest party as it won 303 seats.

The Indian National Congress captured 47 seats, but its tally was far shorter than 54 which is the requisite number for a party to be recognized as the official Opposition party.

DMK was on the third place with 24 seats, Trinamool Congress bagged 23 and YSRCP from Andhra Pradesh won 22 seats. Of the 543 MPs elected for the Lok Sabha, 78 were women i.e., 14%.

This the highest proportion of women achieved so far. Now the Lok Sabha has passed a bill for reserving 33 percent of seats for women.

However, it may take some more time as Census for 2021 could not be conducted due to prevalence of Covid-19. It is said the reservation for women may be possible for LS elections in 2034 only. In 2019, over 61 crore voters cast their votes.

Those eligible to vote (aged over 18) then were 91 crore. This means a little over 67% voters exercised their franchise.

The sheer number of voters, the men and material mobilized for the purpose and the span of time it takes to complete the exercise, makes the Lok Sabha elections unique.