India’s General Election

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       Why Does It Take India Six Weeks to Vote?

       The election is a giant undertaking that requires millions of poll workers, voting machines and security forces to cover deserts, mountains, forests and megacities.

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       A poll official working on electronic voting machines at a distribution center.Credit...R. Satish Babu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

       By John Yoon and Hari Kumar

       April 17, 2024Updated 1:04 a.m. ET

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       When Indians start heading to the polls on Friday, it will be just the beginning of a colossal democratic process. Not until June 4, after six weeks of voting, will India know whether its powerful prime minister, Narendra Modi, will remain in office for a third term.

       Why does it all take so long? The short answer: India is the world’s most populous nation, with 969 million eligible voters. That’s more than one-tenth of the world’s population, or about four times the number of eligible voters in the next largest democracy, the United States.

       The longer answer involves India’s geography, election rules, security apparatus, holidays and electronic voting machines — a complicated choreography for a big, complicated nation.

       Mind-Bogglingly Large India’s first national parliamentary elections, from 1951 to 1952, lasted over 120 days. In 1977, they took five days. But, generally, they have taken weeks or months, even without primary elections, because of their sheer scale.

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       The country has a land area of more than a million square miles, with people in megacities, scattered throughout the Himalayas, in the Thar Desert, inside forests and along the Ganges.

       India’s laws also state that voters can’t be required to travel more than 2 kilometers, or 1.2 miles, from their home to get to a polling station. To make that possible, 12 million election workers will traverse the country to set up polling stations this year, sometimes by foot, bicycle, helicopter or boat — or even by horse, camel or elephant.

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       John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news. More about John Yoon

       Hari Kumar covers India, based out of New Delhi. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about Hari Kumar

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