Posted on 04/06/2014 9:18:38 PM PDT by Cronos
The nine-phase ballot begins on Monday and concludes on 12 May. Votes will be counted on 16 May.
.. A new anti-corruption party, the AAP, is also contesting the elections after a spectacular result in local polls.
The AAP (Aam Aadmi, or Common Man's Party) made a strong showing at the state assembly polls in the capital, Delhi, and is standing for all the seats in the parliament.
..The Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) has 543 elected seats and any party or a coalition needs a minimum of 272 MPs to form a government.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already said he is stepping down and the Congress is being led by Rahul Gandhi, the latest member of India's influential Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
The BJP is being led by the charismatic and controversial Hindu nationalist leader Narendra Modi. Mr Modi, who is ahead in all the pre-election surveys, is the leader of Gujarat state, which witnessed one of India's worst anti-Muslim riots in 2002.
..Some 814 million voters - 100 million more than at the last elections in 2009 - are eligible to vote at 930,000 polling stations, up from 830,000 polling stations in 2009.
Electronic voting machines will be used and will, for the first time, contain a None of the Above (Nota) button - an option for voters who do not want to cast their ballot for any of the candidates.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
And: Go, NOTA!
It sez here that there are 9 phases to the election, which will go on until sometime in May. The BJP candidate will probably be the next PM.
Thanks Cronos.
BJP Modi want an alliance with the USA.
Congress Gandhi want to maintain their historic neutrality.
Roughly speaking BJP is the Conservative Party.
I should point out that the BJP is strongly nationalist, and has been tied in the past to numerous outrages, mostly against the muslim minority in India. If and when they take control this time around, there’s a good chance there will be protests and maybe riots, and at least a possibility that those riots will eventually go cross-border and include Pakistan. There are almost certainly going to be incidents along the LOC, as the Pakistani ISI steps up its rhetoric against the (perceived) anti-Islam position of the new PM.
The last time the BJP was in charge, India ended up in the Kargil War.
I don’t think you can call the BJP the conservative party. That term makes no sense in the Indian sense. It can be called a hindu-religion themed, businessman’s party, but it’s not “liberal”, nor particularly conservative (even not hindu conservative)
we had electronic voting for a bit, remember hanging chads? now we use scantrons and paper ballots. In my area, there are no polling places at all - it’s done by mail.
543 representatives for 1+ billion people is not a whole lot. Probably only a tenth or so of the ratio in Western countries.
OTOH, a 5000+ member parliament would be hard to manage efficiently.
With that large number of voters, that’d pretty much rule out any effects of voter fraud.
BJP is the growth party vs the Congress redistribution party.
It is against normalizing homosexuality.
It wants an alliance with the USA and wants no special privilege for Islam or Muslims within the Indian state.
More so than the British Conservative Party,
I think that qualifies BJP as “roughly conservative.”
The Indian election will be conducted over a month. Strange. They just had “the first phase”.
The good guys are expected to seize power from the leftist Congress Party. Narendra Modi is expected to be the next PM, he’s been critical of Muslims and is striking Thatcher-like tones. The bad candidate for PM is Rahul Gandhi, an empty suit. Seems like the Gandhis are like the Kennedys over there, coasting on the family name.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.