India’s 2024 general elections: what you need to know

Why are these elections important?

India will hold its multi-phase general elections from April 19 to June 1, a vote that will determine the political direction of the world’s most populous country for the next five years.

This generally high turnout is a massive undertaking that has been described as the largest peacetime logistics exercise anywhere.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose power is well entrenched, is seeking a third term. In his decade at the helm, he has established himself as a champion of India’s development, trying to address some of the fundamental shortcomings – such as outdated infrastructure and a lack of clean water and toilets – that prevent the country from reaching its potential as a great power. current. But his push to transform India’s secular democracy into a Hindu-first country has sharpened religious and ethnic fault lines in the vastly diverse country.

In a region of frequent political unrest, India is deeply proud of its virtually undisturbed electoral democracy since its founding as a republic more than 75 years ago. Although independent institutions have come under fire due to Modi’s attempts to centralize power and the ruling party is seen as having an unfair advantage over political fundraising, voting in India is still seen as free and fair, and results are the candidates accepted.

How does India vote?

India has a parliamentary system of government. The party leading the majority of the 543 seats in the upper house of parliament will form the government and appoint one of the winning candidates as prime minister.

The country has more than 960 million eligible voters, of whom approximately 470 million are women. Turnout in Indian elections is usually high; in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the turnout was 67 percent.

Votes are cast electronically in more than one million polling stations, which requires approximately 15 million employees to vote. To reach every possible voter in hamlets and isolated islands in the Himalayas, election officials will travel by any means possible: by rail and helicopter, on horseback and by boat.

India’s elections are the most expensive in the world, and political parties spend money on them more than 7 billion dollars in the 2019 parliamentary elections, according to studies. This expenditure is expected to double in the current elections. To indicate how much a money factor is, the Indian authorities have seized its equivalent hundreds of millions of dollars before the last parliamentary election – in cash, gold, booze and drugs – which they said was intended to bribe voters.

Who is running and who is likely to win?

Prime Minister Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has a large majority in parliament with 543 seats. The BJP won 303 seats in 2019 and, together with its coalition partners, secured a majority of 352 seats.

Although the Indian elections are known to throw surprises, Modi’s BJP is well positioned to return to power. His party, which is ruthlessly trying to expand its base, is cash-rich and has a strong electoral apparatus. Mr Modi has built on this with a multi-pronged approach that offers something to everyone: there is the broader emotional appeal of his Hindu-majority ideology to his core base, coupled with a wide range of welfare and infrastructure programs that seek to win new constituencies for the BJP.

The opposition is struggling to match Mr Modi’s appeal.

The Indian National Congress, the main opposition party, ruled India for decades but has been reduced to the shadows of its former glory during two successive national elections. In 2019 it obtained only 52 seats.

In the run-up to these parliamentary elections, the opposition has tried to unite as one bloc. They are drawn together by fears that a third term for Mr. Modi, who has jailed many opposition party leaders and left others bogged down in investigations, would further marginalize them.

But the opposition has struggled to present a coherent ideological alternative beyond criticism of Mr. Modi’s divisive politics, and its bickering over constituency seat allocations often ends in messy public fights.

When will we hear the results?

Due to India’s vast geographical location, voting for the parliamentary elections takes place in seven phases, and it takes almost six weeks from the first region to cast its vote to the last. Planning is a tricky task, trying to find a good spot that takes into account extreme climatic conditions and takes into account the frequent cultural and religious festivals across India.