India’s 2024 Lok Sabha election will be second-longest in the country. Here’s why

It’s poll season in India and for the next two-and-a-half months, elections are doing to dominate your everyday life in the country with parties attempting to sway and persuade voters. And the excitement picked up a notch on Saturday (16 March) when the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the much-awaited schedule for elections to the 18th Lok Sabha.

The poll body announced that India, the world’s largest democracy, will see polls being held in seven phases — just as it did in 2019 — but will span across a long and tiring 44 days, starting from 19 April, the first phase of voting, to 4 June when the results will be declared.

This makes the 2024 polls the second longest after the first parliamentary elections of 1951-52 that lasted for more than four months.

The 2024 poll season

On Saturday, the EC announced that India will be going to the polls in seven different phases, starting on 19 April. This will be followed by the second on 26 April, and then the next phases are on 7 May, 13 May, 20 May, 25 May and 1 June, respectively. Some states will complete voting on a single day, while others will have voting spread out across several phases.

Results for the polls will be announced on 4 June.

The total days of the electoral process this time, from the announcement of the polls by the Election Commission on Saturday till counting of votes, is 82.

This is the first time in four election cycles that the voting has extended into June, with voting taking place in April and May and new MPs being elected by the end of May. For instance, the last date of polling for the 2019 elections was 19 May and the results were announced on 23 May.

However, this year, the late date of polling is 1 June and results will be announced on 4 June.

When asked why the poll season stretches into June, an Indian Express report citing sources said that it was to avoid consecutive festivals such as Holi, Tamil new year, Bihu and Baisakhi in March and April.

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Longest poll season

The 2024 poll season, stretching over 44 days, is the longest ever since the first Lok Sabha election in 1951-52. Those polls were held from 25 October 1951 to 21 February, 1952 and had a whopping 68 phases in which an astronomical 10,59,50,083 exercised their newly acquired voting right.

In the first Lok Sabha election, Himachal Pradesh voted in 1951 as its weather was commonly inclement in February and March. The remainder of states voted in February-March of 1952, except for Jammu and Kashmir, where no voting took place for Lok Sabha seats until 1967.

In the years to come, Lok Sabha elections were held across four to 10 days with the shortest occurring in 1980. The election was held from 3 to 6 January that year and Indira Gandhi was voted back to power.

The past few elections have not been too long. In 2004, the polls were held across four phases and took 21 days. Next was the 2009 election and that was held in five phases and the entire process took a month’s time. In 2014, the election was held in nine phases, and took 36 days.

Reasons for the long election season

But why is it that the election season is running so long? Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar explained that there were a number of factors that determined the duration of the poll season.

He said that dates are decided based on the geography of regions and other factors such as public holidays, festivals and examinations. “Look at the geography of the country… there are rivers, mountains, snow, jungle, summers… think of the security forces’ movements, they will move in the gaps between phases, through the length and breadth of the country… imagine the pressure on them. There are festivals and exams… when we sit with the calendar, we fix one date, then it has to be changed,” he said.

N Gopalaswami, a former chief election commissioner of India, also agreed with this assessment, saying that deployment of huge security forces required to check everything from polling-related violence or attempts at rigging was the primary reason for the long, drawn-out multiphased election.

There’s also the population to consider. India has a whopping 968 million eligible voters — 150 million more than the last elections in 2019. In fact, India’s electorate is more than the population of all the countries of Europe combined.

In the press conference on Saturday, the EC said: “Over 26 million new voters have been included in the electoral roll, of which approximately 14 million are women, surpassing the newly enrolled men by over 15 per cent,” the Election Commission said.

As per reports, they will cast their votes through 5.5 million electronic voting machines at 1.05 million polling stations, with the EC expected to deploy about 15 million polling staff and security personnel to conduct the elections.

Free and fair elections

However, there are certain apprehensions over having the polls be extended over such a long period of time. N Bhaskara Rao, chairman of the New Delhi-based Centre for Media Studies, in an Al Jazeera report has argued that staggered polls are no guarantee for free and fair elections as longer campaigning favours the ruling party of the day. He added that the process should be shortened. The longer the process, the more the opportunity for the ruling party to use government infrastructure to campaign.

A Deccan Herald report also argues that normal functioning of governments stops during the polls and it is wrong to paralyse the functioning of a government for such long periods of time.

When asked about a long polling season hurting the Opposition, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Rajiv Kumar said, “We do not take any action to favour anyone or hurt anyone. If anyone has such doubt they are wrong.”

With inputs from agencies