India’s 2019 Lok Sabha election in numbers: voters, booths and seizures

India began voting in its general election on Thursday, the largest democratic exercise in the world, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a second consecutive term. Polling runs in seven phases until 19 May, and votes will be counted on 23 May. Here are some of the figures behind the election in a country of 1.3 billion people.

Voters and candidates

• Roughly 900 million people are eligible to vote, about 10 percent more than in 2014. Around 432 million of them are women, and 15 million are aged 18 or 19.
• In the first phase, 1,279 candidates are contesting 91 constituencies, but only 7 percent are women. In the previous election, 668 of the 8,251 candidates were women.
• Voters elect 543 of the 545 Lok Sabha seats. The other two are reserved for the Anglo-Indian community, whose members are nominated rather than elected.
• Modi’s 2014 victory margin of 570,128 votes in Vadodara, Gujarat, was the largest of that election.

Running the poll

The Election Commission of India, an autonomous constitutional body, has more than 300 permanent staff at its New Delhi headquarters. It has set up about 1 million polling stations, 10 percent more than in 2014, with the aim that no voter is more than 2 km (1.2 miles) from one. More than 11 million officials will travel on foot, by road, special train, helicopter, boat and occasionally elephant. A commission study last year found that more than 80,000 stations lacked mobile connectivity and about 20,000 were in forest or semi-forest areas. One booth in Gujarat’s Gir forest is being set up for a single voter, a Hindu priest.

Voting is spread over 39 days partly so that officials and security forces can be moved between regions; according to commission estimates, the 2014 election cost 38.7 billion rupees, or USD 552 million. It used 1.8 million electronic voting machines in that election, and opposition groups say the machines can be tampered with and want stronger cross-checks.

Cash, drugs and liquor

Some parties and their supporters hand out cash, drugs and alcohol for votes. So far the commission has seized cash of 5.1 billion rupees, equal to USD 73.6 million. It has also caught about 21,500 kg of drugs, valued at 7.2 billion rupees, along with 8.8 million litres of liquor, valued at 1.8 billion rupees. In the last election it seized 12 billion rupees in cash, liquor and drugs.

What happened next

The BJP won 303 of 543 seats and Narendra Modi was sworn in for a second term on 30 May 2019. See also: elections

Originally published on 11 April 2019. Rewritten on 9 October 2026.

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