Indian general election, 2014

2009 ← members Before May 31, 2014

All 543 seats in the Lok Sabha 272 seats needed for a majority   Party Congress BJP Alliance UPA NDA Last election 262 seats,37.22% 159 seats,24.63% Current seats 228 159 Seats needed 44 113

Incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Congress

A general election will be the next election for the 16th Lok Sabha in India. Voting will take place in all parliamentary constituencies of India to elect Members of Parliament in the Lok Sabha. The current 15th Lok Sabha will complete its constitutional term on May 31, 2014.^[1]

Background

By constitutional requirement, elections to the Lok Sabha must be held every five years or whenever parliament is dissolved by the President of India. The previous election to the 15th Lok Sabha was conducted in April–May 2009 and its term would naturally expire on 31 May 2014. The election will be organised by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and are normally held in multiple phases to better handle the large electoral base and its security concerns.^{[citation needed]}

Candidates

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has been speculated to be the BJP's prime ministerial candidate.^[2]Indian National Congress's Rahul Gandhi is also front runner for the post from his party.

Organization of the election

Use of technology

In January 2013, the Election Commission of India announced that it would be using an SMS based alert system called Communication Plan for Election (COMET) during the 2014 elections. The system, aimed at sending messages to the millions of government official on election duty, was successfully deployed in the assembly polls in Goa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Manipur in early 2012 and in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat in 2012. The COMET system "uses coded text messages through mobile phones to collect data about officials, information about scheduled events like staff reaching the polling station, mock polls conducted, start of polling, voting percentages every two hours, number of voters in queue after voting time was over, and whether the poll party reached safely at the high security Electronic Voting Machine (EVMs) deposit centre." The system would also send alerts to the local police in case of disturbance at any polling station. ^[3]

Opinion polling

Pre-poll surveys

Agency	Dates	Sample size	Results
Times Now-CVoter	January-March 2013	No sample size provided	UPA 128, NDA 184 [4]
Headlines Today-CVoter	April-May 2013	120,000	UPA (no Modi) 132 (with Modi) 155, NDA (no Modi) 179 (with Modi) 220 [5]
The Week magazine	July 2013	No sample size provided	NDA 197, UPA 184, Others 162 [6]

References

External links

• Election Commission of India website

[hide] v t e Elections in India General elections 1920 1923 1926 1930 1934 1937 1945 1951 1957 1962 1967 1971 1977 1980 1984 1989 1991 1996 1998 1999 2004 2009 2014 State elections 1952 1998 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 See also: Elections in Andhra Pradesh Arunachal Pradesh Assam Bihar Chhattisgarh Delhi Goa Gujarat Haryana Himachal Pradesh Jammu and Kashmir Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Manipur Meghalaya Mizoram Nagaland Odisha Puducherry Punjab Rajasthan Sikkim Tamil Nadu Tripura Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand West Bengal