Election Commission of India has announced the dates for Indian General Elections – 2014 wherein 81.4 crore Indians will start casting their valuable votes to constitute 16th Lok Sabha in India. Voting will start from April 7th and end on May 12th, divided into 9 phases.
Counting of the votes will start from May 16 and by the end of May, formation of the new government will be decided. There are total of 543 parliamentary constituencies in India, and the winning party or coalition needs 272 seats to form the next government of world’s largest democracy.
Street fighting broke out in Delhi, Lucknow and Gujarat as Chief Election Commissioner V.S. Sampath announced the dates of world’s most complex management exercise.
Contents
Some Mind Boggling Numbers
- 814 million registered voters are more than the entire population of Europe, and this event itself is a world record.
- This is the longest phase of elections ever witnessed in India or anywhere else in the world.
- Compared to last elections in 2009, 9.7 crore new registered voters have been added to the overall electoral list.
- Interestingly, 23 million or 3% of the total voters are within the age group of 18-19 who are heavily influenced by the social media, and can prove to be a major game changer.
- There will be 930,000 polling stations spread across 543 constituencies
- Total of 12 lakh electronic voting machines will be deployed across polling booths, and the total expenditure to Government will be around Rs 3500 crore.
- Millions of staff and a solid police force of 120,000 will be dedicated for proper management and execution of this gargantuan event.
The voting will happen across the length and breadth of the country, right in the deserts of Rajasthan to tiny islands in Indian ocean. The Election Commission of India has assured that no person needs to travel more than 2 kms to cast his vote.
Every candidate can only spend Rs 70 lakh on promoting themselves, so that candidate gets a level playing field to contest the elections.
Interesting Facts About the Past & Current Elections
- In 1996, one constituency in Tamil Nadu has 1032 candidates, out of which 88 didn’t get a single vote (I wonder what happened to their own vote; they should have atleast got that!)
- In 2009, a polling booth was created in Western Gujarat so that one single voter could caste his vote (this only in Gujarat!)
- In this election, 28,314 voters have identified themselves as transgender, and their sexual preference has been recorded as “Other”.
- There are 11,844 NRIs who have registered to vote in this year’s elections
- 98% of Indian Voters have a Photo-Identity Voter’s Card
- For the first time, voters will have a “None of the Above” or the NOTA option during voting
Election Dates For Important Cities
Here are dates for some of the important Metros and cities in India
- New Delhi will vote on April 10th
- Mumbai will vote on April 24th
- Kolkata on May 12th
- Chennai on April 24th
- Pune on April 17th
- Lucknow on April 30th
- Bangalore on April 17th
- Hyderabad & Ahmedabad on April 30th.
Election Dates For various States
- Andhra Pradesh (42 seats): April 30, May 7
- Bihar (40 seats): April 10, April 17, April 24, April 30, May 7, May 12
- Gujarat (26 seats): April 30
- Jammu and Kashmir (6 seats): April 10, April 17, April 24, April 30, May 7
- Jharkhand (14 seats): April 10, April 17, April 24
- Madhya Pradesh (29 seats): April 10, April 17, April 24
- Maharashtra (48 seats): April 10, April 17, April 24
- Rajasthan (25 seats): April 17, April 24
- Tamil Nadu (39 seats): April 24
- Uttar Pradesh (80 seats, the most in India): April 10, April 17, April 24, April 30, May 7, May 12
- West Bengal (42 seats): April 17, April 24, April 30, May 7, May 12
Election Dates For All 543 Constituencies in India
If you are unable to view following file in the browser, you can click here to view.
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Nice article Mohul.
You could have made a infrographic out of all the info available.
I noted two points which I wanted to point out.
1) NRIs :All my life I was of the view (having told by ppl when I went out of India first time) that NRIs are not allowed to vote. That’s the reason, I never bothered to register in voter’s list when on vacation. (Vacation time is so little and precious to be wasted on some registrations you know?)
What surprised me is out of the tens of millions of NRIs all around the globe, 11K+ registered for voting.
2) The file which shows all 543 constituencies has some error. Have you noticed Andhra has only two seats (the first two places in the list) while there are 42 seats in Andhra. I think the list missed first page and started from second page.
Just my two paisa :)