From April 19 to June 1, general elections are being held in India to elect 543 members of the Lok Sabha (the House of the People, India’s lower house) and the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi is running for a third consecutive term. This is the biggest election in history – and lasts 44 days in a country where approximately 970 million people are eligible to vote (out of a population of 1.4 billion), including some 18 million first-time voters.
India’s elections are massive in scale, involving hundreds of millions of voters spread across diverse geographical, cultural, and linguistic regions. The country’s vast population and diverse demographics make it a unique electoral challenge. With the election in full swing, Modi seems positioned to be reelected – but his campaign is divisive. Relatively low turnout so far has rattled his campaign, raising questions whether his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies can achieve the landslide victory predicted by opinion polls just one month ago.
Join the American Council on Germany for the next event in the virtual series Superwahljahr 2024. We’ll be joined by the Süddeutsche Zeitung South-East Asia Correspondent, David Pfeifer, who is in India covering the elections.