Voting for this year’s Lok Sabha elections will start on 19 April, with the seventh and final phase scheduled for 1 June. While the number of phases is much like the 2019 season, the 2024 polls will be the longest ever (44 days) since 1951-52 in terms of the number of days between the first and last day, a Mint analysis showed. The 2019 election was 36-days long.
With such long election schedules, it’s unsurprising that India’s poll-related spending is also expanding rapidly. In the last Lok Sabha polls in 2019, various entities, including the poll panel, the government, parties and candidates, spent as much as ₹55,000 crore combined, according to an estimate by CMS India. The government and the Election Commission of India (ECI) accounted for an estimated 15% of this, while candidates and political parties spent 75%.
The latest available data on the election-related spending by the Centre is for 2014, when it amounted to ₹3,870 crore, a jump of 3.5 times since the 2009 polls, according to the ECI. During the first Lok Sabha polls in 1951-52, the Centre had incurred an expenditure of just ₹10.45 crore.
Here is a look at the size of India’s elections—and how much they cost.
