Bangladesh, March 25 -- The Indian Election Commission has announced on March 10 that India's next general election will take place in seven phases between April 11 and May 19; votes will be counted on May 23. Lok Shaba (the lower house) has 543 elected seats and any party or coalition will need a minimum of 272 MPs to form a government.
One needs to understand the enormity of this colossal matrix. This time, more than 900 million people above the age of 18 are eligible to cast their ballots at nearly a million polling stations. The number of voters will be bigger than the population of Europe and Australia combined. Indians being enthusiastic voters by nature, the turnout in the last general election in 2014 was more than 66 per cent, up ...