India, a central government with elected officials at the national, state and local levels, elects the head of government, the Prime Minister directly by the people through a general election which takes place every five years by Universal Adult Suffrage. All members of the federal legislature, the Parliament, also are directly elected by the people of India through a voting system.
Election, a step-by-step process, is conducted in a number of phases. The election process is controlled by the Election Commission of India with the announcement of election dates being the first step which brings into effectiveness the ‘model code of conduct’ for the political parties to announce the results and submit the list of successful candidates to the committee that makes decisions of the centre or the state being the second and third step respectively.
India held general elections in five phases between 19 April 2009 and 13 May 2009 to the 15th Lok Sabha (Lower house of Indian Parliament) with an electorate of 714 million declared to be the largest democratic election in the world till date. Elections to the Lok Sabha must be held every five years, or whenever the President of India dissolves the Parliament. The expenses for the election are bared by the Parliament of India.
Voting is done through Electronic Voting Machines (EVM). As in the 2004 election, the government deployed 1,368,430 voting machines across 828,804 polling stations across the country. This was done to overcome geographical barriers, to avoid vulnerability of threat, and to reduce the distance traveled by voters.
