India goes to polls from April 20
Pallab Bhattacharya, from New Delhi
India is going to the polls on a four-phase schedule starting from April 20 and ending on May 10 this year, Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy announced it at a news conference yesterday.Counting of the vote will start on May 13. For the very first time the polls in India will be fully electronically devised across the 543 Lok Sabha (Lower House of bicameral parliament) constituencies, engaging a total of 1.75 million Electronic Voting Machines (EVM). The first phase of the polls, covering 141 Lok Sabha seats will be on April 20,while the second covering 137 seats, the third covering 83 seats and the concluding phase covering 182 seats are slated for April 26,May 5 and May 10 respectively. Earlier on February 6, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee dissolved the parliament, eight months ahead of its time. Along with the parliamentary polls, elections for new legislatures in four states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka and Sikkim will also be held. Of these fours states the Congress runs only Karnataka, while BJP and its allies run the rest three.
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