India will hold a seven-phase general election starting April 19, with the results to be declared on June 4.
The Election Commission of India announced the schedule of the six-week marathon vote during a news conference in New Delhi on Saturday.
Nearly 970 million voters – more than the entire population of the United States, the European Union and Russia combined – are eligible to cast their ballot, according to the poll panel’s data, making the election the largest democratic exercise in the world.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking a third straight term in the vote, has set a target of 370 seats for his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and 400-plus for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) the BJP heads in the 543-member lower house of parliament.
In 2019, the BJP won 303 seats – the best for the Hindu nationalist party that was formed in 1980.
