New Delhi, March 8 -- From transporting voting machines on camelback to remote corners of its vast western desert to bolstering control rooms for monitoring malicious deepfakes, India is preparing to run the world's largest election due by May.

More than 960 million Indians are registered to vote at over one million polling stations across the country in a mammoth electoral exercise with 2,400 political parties that may contest, and during which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will bid for a rare third term.

India could announce in weeks the dates for general elections that Modi is widely expected to comfortably win.

The nation's election commission - tasked with conducting a fair vote - will for the first time set up hundreds of c...