Indian General Elections 2009

• India will go to the polls in five phases from April 16 to May 13 to elect a new Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament).
• The elections will choose 543 of the 545 members of the 15th Lok Sabha. Two members of the Anglo-Indian community are nominated by the President.
• Polling will be held in 124 parliamentary constituencies in 15 states/Union Territories (UTs) on April 16, in 141 constituencies in 13 states/UTs on April 23, in 107 constituencies in 11 states/UTs on April 30, in 85 constituencies in 8 states/UTs on May 7 and for 86 seats in 9 states/UTs on May 13.
• In the case of one constituency, Inner Manipur, the voting in the second phase will be held on April 22. said.
• This will be the first General Elections when a new Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) will take over during the elections. Mr Navin Chawla, an Election Commissioner, will succeed Mr N Gopalaswami, whose tenure as CEC will end on April 20.
• Counting of votes will take place on May 16 and is expected to be completed on the same day.
• Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh will be the two states where polling will be held in five phases.
• Bihar will have four phases of polling, while it will be in three phases in Maharashtra and West Bengal and in two phases in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Manipur, Orissa and Punjab.
• The remaining 15 states and the 7 UTs will have single-phase polling.
• The tenure of the present Lok Sabha, the 14th, will expire in the normal course on June 1 and a new House is required to be constituted before June 2, as per the constitutional provisions.
• Elections will also be held simultaneously to the legislative assemblies of three states---Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Sikkim, whose terms are expiring in May-June.
• Casual vacancies in seven assembly constituencies---Jamtara in Jharkhand, Bidar in Karnataka, South Tuipai in Mizoram, and Dimapur, Chizam, Tizit and Tuesnsang Sadar in Nagaland---would be filled up through bye-elections on the same dates as the relevant parliamentary constituency goes to the polls.
• The elections in 499 out of the 543 parliamentary constituencies in all the states, Delhi and the Union Territory of Puducherry (except Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Manipur and Nagaland) and to the state assemblies of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Sikkim will be held on the basis of the newly delimited constituencies.
• The total electorate in the country, after the latest round of revision of electoral rolls, is about 714 million, an increase of 43 million over the figure for the last Lok Sabha elections in April-May, 2004.
• This would be the first time that the entire country, except Assam, Nagaland and Jammu and Kashmir, would be using the Photo Electoral Rolls (covering 522 of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies and 82 per cent of the voters).
• There will be 828,804 polling stations in the country as compared to 687,402 in the 2004 elections. Of these, as many as 12,901 new polling stations have been set up for villages with less than 300 voters to address concerns of threat and intimidation to voters.
• Electronic voting machines (EVMs) will be used in all the polling stations across the country, as was done during the last elections. There are 13,68,430 EVMs available in the country.

Deployment of Observers

• The Election Commission will deploy more than 2000 senior government officers across the country as observers to ensure smooth polling and to keep a close watch on the election process in the areas allotted to them.
• Apart from the Indian Administrative Service, the officers will also be drawn from the Indian Revenue Service, Indian Custom & Excise Service, Indian Forest Service and State Civil Service Officers.
• Unlike the last Lok Sabha elections in 2004, the functions of General and Expenditure observers have been merged this time. All the Observers shall take care of both general and expenditure aspects of election process.
• The number of officers to be deployed as observers has been worked out depending on the size, sensitivity and the terrain of the constituency.
• For 543 Parliamentary Constituencies 1,615 officers from Group 'A' and about 850 officers from State Civil services are being appointed as Commission's observers. As such, each Parliamentary Constituency will have a minimum of two to three Observers.
• The same Observer shall also take care of the assembly constituencies comprised in a Parliamentary Constituency, where the Legislative Assembly elections are simultaneously being held.
• These Observers shall have to reach their allotted constituencies latest by the last date of nomination and will remain there for entire period ending with poll or repoll, wherever ordered. They shall again go to the constituency two days before counting of votes and remain there till declaration of result.
• The expenditure reports of the Observers shall be scrutinized, post election, by a select group of three to four senior expert officers who would be deputed to ECI for the purpose.
• The Commission would also be using Senior Cadets of the National Cadet Corps (NCC) for queueing and discipline at the polling stations.
• Similarly, National Service Scheme (NSS) volunteers will be used for sundry election works.

Number of Seats in Different States/Union Territories

Reserved Constituencies

• After the delimitation exercise, the 15th Lok Sabha will have 11 more reserved seats even though the total number of seats will remain at 543.
• The number of constituencies reserved for Scheduled Castes has increased from 79 to 84 and the number for Scheduled Tribes has gone up from 41 to 47.

Opinion/Exit Polls

• In pursuance of an order passed by the Supreme Court on January 19, 2009, the Election Commission has issued guidelines to be followed in the matter of publication/dissemination of results of opinion polls and exit polls in connection with the General Elections.
• As per these guidelines, results of opinion/exit polls, carried out at any time, cannot be published, publicised or disseminated in any manner during the period starting from 48 hours before the hour fixed for conclusion of poll in the first phase of election and till the conclusion of poll in the last phase of election. That period started on April 14 and will continue till the end of polling in the last phase on May 13.

• The total electorate has increased from by 43 million to 671 million in the 2004 Lok Sabha Election to 714 million this year.
• There are 340,649,406 women voters and 372,324,113 men electors. In states such as Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Puducherry, the number of women electors is higher than men.
• Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of electors at 116,424,101 while Lakshadweep has only 44,424 electors. Uttar Pradesh also has the highest number of service electors registered followed by Maharashtra and Haryana.

• The Unnao Parliamentary Constituency in Uttar Pradesh as the highest number of electors at 18,97,474. Lakshadweep has the lowest number of voters at 44,424.
• There is only one voter in the Banez polling station in Una in the Gir Forest area of Junagadh district of Gujarat.
• There are only two voters at Sheradand polling station in Bharatpur Sonhat in Chhattisgarh.
• There are only three electors each in the Lumta, Mramboo and Upper Modoi Deep polling stations in Arunachal Pradesh.

• The number of polling stations has increased from 6,87,402 in the 2004 elections to 8,28,804 this time, mainly due to the increase in the number of voters and rationalisation of polling stations in the interest of the voter.
• The highest number of polling stations is in Uttar Pradesh at 1,28,112. The lowest number is in Sikkim at 581.
• As many as 12,901 new polling stations have been set up for villages/hamlets having less than 300 voters following the vulnerability mapping exercise under taken by the Commission to identify the hamlets and voter segments vulnerable to threat and intimidation.