2019 Indian general election


The 2019 Indian general election was held in seven phases from 11 April to 19 May 2019 to constitute the 17th Lok Sabha. The votes were counted and the result declared on 23 May. About 911 million people were eligible to vote, and voter turnout was over 67 per cent – the highest ever, as well as the highest ever participation by women voters.
The Bharatiya Janata Party won 303 seats, further increasing its substantial majority and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance won 353 seats. The BJP won 37.36% of votes, while the NDA's combined vote was 45% of the 60.37 crore votes that were polled. The Indian National Congress won just 52 seats, and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance won 91. Other parties and their alliances won 98 seats.
Legislative assembly elections in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim were held simultaneously with the general election, as well as by-elections to twenty-two seats of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.

Election system

All 543 elected MPs are elected from single-member constituencies using first-past-the-post voting. The President of India appoints an additional two members from the Anglo-Indian community if he believes that community is under-represented.
Eligible voters must be Indian citizens, 18 or older than 18, an ordinary resident of the polling area of the constituency and registered to vote, possess a valid voter identification card issued by the Election Commission of India or an equivalent. Some people convicted of electoral or other offences are barred from voting.
The elections are held on schedule and as per the Constitution of India that mandates parliamentary elections once every five years.

Election schedule

The election schedule was announced by Election Commission of India on 10 March 2019, and with it the Model Code of Conduct came into effect.
The election was scheduled to be held in seven phases. In Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, the election was held in all seven phases. The polling for the Anantnag constituency in the state of Jammu and Kashmir was held in three phases, due to violence in the region.

Rescheduled voting, cancellations

Issues

Allegations of undermining institutions

The opposition parties accused the NDA government of destroying democratic institutions and processes. Modi denied these allegations, and blamed Congress and the communists for undermining institutions including the police, the CBI, and the CAG, and cited the murder of BJP activists in Kerala and Madhya Pradesh. The Congress party, along with other opposition parties and a group of retired civil servants, accused the ECI of being compromised, and implied that they endorse the model code of conduct violations by Narendra Modi and other BJP political leaders during their campaigns. Another group of 81 retired civil servants, judges and academics disputed these allegations, made counter-allegations, and stated that the ECI acted fairly and similarly in alleged violations by either side. The group states that such political attacks on the ECI are a "deliberate attempt to denigrate and delegitimise the democratic institutions".

Economic performance

According to The Times of India, the major economic achievements of the incumbent NDA government include an inflation rate less than 4 per cent, the GST reform, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code. Its programs, in recent years, that have positively touched many among the Indian masses, include the Jan Dhan Yojana, rural cooking gas and electricity for homes. According to the IMF, the Indian economy has been growing in recent years, its GDP growth rate is among the highest in the world for major economies, and India is expected to be the fastest growing major economy in 2019–2020 and 2020–2021, with real GDP projected to grow at 7.3 per cent. The GDP growth data has been disputed by a group of Indian social scientists, economists and the political opposition's election campaign, while a group of Indian chartered accountants has defended the data, the GDP calculation methodology, and questioned the motivations of those disputing the recent Indian GDP statistics.
The opposition's election campaign has claimed that both the demonetisation and GST law have "seriously hit small business, farmers and casual labour", states The Times of India. The incumbent has claimed that they inherited a country from the previous Congress-led government that was "a legacy of policy paralysis, corruption and economic fragility", and that the BJP-led government policies have placed India on better economic fundamentals and a fast gear. Modi claims that his government pursued demonetisation in the national interest, his government has identified and de-registered 338,000 shell companies, identified and recovered in black money since 2014, and almost doubled India's tax base. The Congress party disputes the incumbents' claims, and has alleged that BJP offices have "become hubs of creating black money", and seeks a judicial inquiry into the Rafale deal with France and BJP's role in corruption.

National security and terrorism

In response to the 2019 Pulwama attack, the Indian Air Force conducted airstrikes inside Pakistan — for the first time since the 1971 Indo-Pak war. The ongoing conflict with Pakistan became a significant factor in the election. The opposition parties accused of politicising the army, whilst the BJP countered their accusations by stating that such allegations raised by them were adversely affecting the morale of armed forces.
According to the Pew Research Center, both before and after the outbreak of recent India-Pakistan tensions, their 2018 and 2019 surveys suggest that the significant majority of the voters consider Pakistan as a "very serious threat" to their country, and terrorism to be a "very big problem".

Unemployment

According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Indian voters consider the lack of employment opportunities as a "very big problem" in their country. "About 18.6 million Indians were jobless and another 393.7 million work in poor-quality jobs vulnerable to displacement", states the Pew report.
A report on unemployment prepared by the National Sample Survey Office's periodic labour force survey, has not been officially released by the government. According to Business Today, this report is the "first comprehensive survey on employment conducted by a government agency after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation move in November 2016". According to this report, the 2017–2018 "usual status" unemployment rate in India is 6.1 per cent, which is a four-decade high. The government has claimed that the report was not final. According to the International Labour Organization – a United Nations agency, unemployment is rising in India and the "unemployment rate in the country will stand at 3.5 percent in 2018 and 2019 – the same level of unemployment seen in 2017 and 2016", instead of dropping to 3.4 percent as it had previously projected. According to the ILO's World Employment Social Outlook Report, the unemployment rate in India has been in the 3.4 to 3.6 percent range over the UPA-government led 2009–2014 and the NDA-government led 2014–2019 periods.
Opposition parties have claimed in their election campaign that the unemployment in India has reached crisis levels. The NDA government has denied the existence of any job crisis. Prime minister Narendra Modi claimed that jobs are not lacking but the accurate data on jobs has been lacking.
The opposition has attacked the NDA government's performance with the NSSO reported 6.1 percent unemployment data. Modi and his government have questioned this job statistics report, stating that "most surveys that try to capture unemployment rate are skewed since these did not cover the unorganised sector, which accounts for 85–90 per cent of jobs ".

Agrarian and rural distress

The Congress party campaign has highlighted "agrarian distress" as an election issue. The BJP campaign has highlighted that the Congress party had been in power for five generations of the Nehru dynasty and its past promises and campaign issues have been empty. It claims that the recent farmer loan waivers by Congress have not reached "even 10% of the farmers" nor has it helped the financial situation of the farmers. BJP highlights that its "Kisan Samman Nidhi" helps the small farmers at the time of seed planting through a direct deposit of ₹6000 to their accounts. The opposition has accused this as being an attempt to lure voters.
According to The Times of India, a group of farmer associations have demanded that the 2019 election manifesto of competing political parties should promise to "keep agriculture out of the World Trade Organization " and that the interests of Indian farmers must not be compromised in global trade treaties. They have also demanded loan waivers and income support for the agriculture sector. According to the Business Standard and the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization, India has witnessed record crop harvests in recent years including 2017 when its farmers grew more foodgrains than ever before. However, the farmers consider the "low remunerative prices" they receive in the free market to be too low and a need for the Indian government to establish higher minimum support prices for agricultural products. These farmers consider this an issue for the 2019 general elections.

Dynasty politics

The BJP has highlighted that the Congress party has relied on Nehru's dynasty for leadership since India's independence, its lack of internal party institutions and claimed that whenever Congress has been in power, the freedom of press and Indian government institutions have "taken a severe beating". During the election campaign, its leaders have mentioned the Emergency of 1975, the nepotism, corruption and widespread abuses of human rights under the Congress rule in the past. Congress-led alliance leader H. D. Kumaraswamy – the son of a former prime minister of India and the former chief minister of Karnataka, has countered that "India developed because of dynasty politics", stating that "dynasty politics are not the main issue, rather country's problems are". The Congress has alleged hypocrisy by the BJP, claiming that the BJP itself forms alliances with dynasty-based parties such as the Akali Dal in Punjab, and that family relatives of senior BJP leaders such as Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley have been in politics too.
According to an IndiaSpend report published by the BloombergQuint, the smaller and regional parties such as the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, Lok Jan Sakti Party, Shiromani Akali Dal, Biju Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party have higher densities of dynasty-derived candidates and elected representatives in recent years. While both the Congress and the BJP have also nominated candidates from political dynasties, states the report, the difference between them is that in Congress "top party leadership has been handed down from generation to generation within the same family", while there has been a historic non-dynastic diversity in the top leadership within the BJP. According to the report, while BJP has also nominated candidates from political dynasties, its better public relations operation "can leap to its defence when attacked on the same grounds". In contrast to the IndiaSpend report, analysis of Kanchan Chandra, a prominent professor of Politics, of the 2004, 2009 and 2014 general elections included a finding that the Congress party has had about twice or more dynastic parliamentarians than the BJP at those elections, and higher than all major political parties in India except the Samajwadi Party. Many of these dynastic politicians in India who inherit the leadership positions have never held any jobs and lack state or local experience, states Anjali Bohlken – a professor and political science scholar, and this raises concerns of rampant nepotism and appointments of their own friends, relatives and cronies if elected. The BJP has targeted the Congress party in the 2019 elections for alleged nepotism and a family dynasty for leadership.

Campaign controversies

Income tax raids

In April 2019, raids conducted by the Income Tax Department found bundles of unaccounted for cash amounting to, along with liquor and documentary evidence in premises of people with close connections to Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kamal Nath of the Congress. Modi has highlighted this evidence to attack the Congress in its election campaign, alleging corruption is part of Congress party's culture.

Social media abuses and fake news

According to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the election attracted a systematic attempt to spread misinformation through social media. Facebook said that over a hundred of these advocacy accounts spreading disinformation were traced to "employees of the Pakistani military public relations wing". Some others have been linked to the INC and BJP.
Political parties spent over with the largest spending by BJP on digital platforms for online ads. The BJP placed 2,500 ads on Facebook while the Congress placed 3,686 ads. According to a study by Vidya Narayanan and colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute, social media was used by all the major parties and alliances, and all of them linked or posted divisive and conspiratorial content and images. According to Narayanan, "a third of the BJP's images, a quarter of the INC's images, and a tenth the SP-BSP's images were catalogued as divisive and conspiratorial". The Narayanan et al. study added that "we observed very limited amounts of hate speech, gore or pornography in either platform samples" by BJP, Congress or SP-BSP, but the election did include proportionally more polarising information on social media than other countries except for the US presidential election in 2016.
About 50,000 fake news stories were published during the recent Lok Sabha elections and shared 2 million times, according to a study conducted by fact-checking startup Logically.

NaMo TV and Modi biopic

According to The Financial Times and other news sources, on 31 March 2019, the cable and satellite operators – such as Tata Sky, DishTV, and Videocon – added a new "NaMo TV" channel to the dozens of news and entertainment channels they already offer. Further, independently, a Bollywood biopic named "PM Narendra Modi" starring Vivek Oberoi was due for release in early April. The NaMo TV channel exclusively focuses on replaying Narendra Modi's speeches, the live coverage of rallies by Modi and key leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party, and presenting the incumbent government's initiatives and achievements in the last five years to the audience that chooses to tune to the channel. The election time Bollywood biopic, states The Financial Times, is "adulatory, which depicts his rise from humble origins as the son of a railway station tea-seller to a strongman who vows to avenge Pakistani terror attacks".
The Indian opposition led by the Congress Party and activists opposed to the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party have expressed outrage and alleged that it violates India's election laws and the regulations on "broadcast channels" under the Programme Codes of the Cable TV Act of 1994. The Bharatiya Janata Party and its supporters claim that this is an exercise of the "Right to Free Speech" protected by the Article 19 of the Indian Constitution, a means to address the bias against them and to communicate directly to the voters. They also claim that the NaMo TV does not violate any regulations or laws, as similar "Direct-to-Home operator channels" have already been distributed by cable and satellite operators in the past since 2006. Others state that the audience has a choice to ignore or tune into the channel, and "only Modi's most devoted loyalists were likely to tune in". However, they state that if the BJP pressures public facilities and commercial establishments to show it exclusively during the elections then that would lead to abuse. The Congress Party and activists have filed a complaint to the Indian Election Commission, demanding that the NaMo TV channel be stopped. The Election Commission announced on 12 April that any content broadcast on the NaMo TV must be pre-approved by its committee, and only pre-certified content can be broadcast. On 13 April 2019, the BJP submitted the contents of NaMo TV to the Election Commission designated "certification and monitoring committee" for its review and pre-certification. The Election Commission ruled on 19 April 2019, that live speeches of Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders can be broadcast on NaMo TV as well as Twitter platform tweets can be broadcast by Rahul Gandhi and Congress leaders during the silence period. However, neither should mention the constituency or candidates covered by the silence period immediately prior to the polling date.
The ECI blocked the release of the Modi biopic while the election is in progress. The producers appealed this "stay" to the Supreme Court. The film was released on 24 May 2019 finally.

EC actions under Article 324

Election Commission curtailed West Bengal campaigning by one day, after a bust of 19th century Bengali icon Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was vandalised during 7th phase poll violence.

Party campaigns

Highlights of the Congress manifesto

The Congress released its manifesto, titled Congress Will Deliver on 3 April. Some of its highlights:
The BJP released its manifesto sub-titled Sankalpit Bharat, Sashakt Bharat on 8 April. Some of its highlights:
Other national and regional parties have released their manifestos too:
Several organisations have offered varying estimates for the cost of election campaign. The Centre for Media Studies in New Delhi estimates the election campaign could exceed $7 billion. According to the Association for Democratic Reforms, an election watchdog, in the financial year 2017–18 BJP received, about 12 times more donations than Congress and five other national parties combined.
The electoral bonds in denominations ranging from 1,000 rupees to 10 million rupees can be purchased and donated to a political party. The bonds don't carry the name of the donor and are exempt from tax. Factly – an India data journalism portal, traced the electoral bond donations for 2018 under India's Right to Information Act. According to Factly, electoral bonds worth about were purchased and donated in 2018. According to Bloomberg, this accounted for 31.2 percent of political donations in 2018, while 51.4 percent of the total donated amount were each below and these too were from unknown donors. About 47 percent of the donations to political parties were from known sources. Between 1 January and 31 March 2019, donors bought worth of electoral bonds and donated. The spending in elections boosts national GDP, and the 2009 election spending contributed about 0.5 percent to GDP.
According to Centre for Media Studies, the BJP spent over Rs 28,000 crore of the Rs 60,000 crore spent by all political parties during the polls. Congress questions BJP over its poll expenditure

Parties and alliances

Political alliances

With the exception of 2014, no single party has won the majority of seats in the Lok Sabha since 1984, and therefore, forming alliances is the norm in Indian elections.
There were five main national pre-poll alliances. They are the National Democratic Alliance headed by the BJP, the United Progressive Alliance headed by the INC, Mahagathbandhan, or MGB, Federal Front headed by All India Trinamool Congress, and the left front of Communist-leaning parties. Given the volatile nature of coalition politics in India, alliances may change during and after the election.
The INC has not formed an alliance in states where it is in direct contest with the BJP. These states include Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. It has formed alliances with regional parties in Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Jharkhand, and Kerala.
In January 2019, Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party announced a grand alliance to contest 76 out of the 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh leaving two seats, namely Amethi and Rae Bareli, for INC and another two for other political parties.

Political parties

More than 650 parties contested in these elections. Most of them were small with regional appeal. The main parties are the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress.It was the first time when BJP contested more seats than Congress in the Lok Sabha elections.

Candidates

Altogether 8,039 candidates are in the fray for 542 parliamentary constituencies, i.e., 14.8 candidates per constituency on an average, according to PRS India, an NGO.
About 40% of the candidates fielded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party have a criminal case against them. Key opposition party Congress is not far behind with 39% of the candidates with criminal charges, according to Association of Democratic Reforms analysis.

Voter statistics

According to the ECI, 900 million people were eligible to vote, with an increase of 84.3 million voters since the last election in 2014, making it the largest-ever election in the world. 15 million voters aged 18–19 years became eligible to vote for the first time. 468 million eligible voters were males, 432 million were females and 38325 identified themselves belonging to third gender. Total 71,735 overseas voters also enrolled.
The residents of the former enclaves exchanged under the 2015 India-Bangladesh boundary agreement voted for the first time.

Electronic voting machines and security

The ECI deployed a total of 1.74 million voter-verified paper audit trail units and 3.96 million electronic voting machines in 1,035,918 polling stations. Approximately 270,000 paramilitary and 2 million state police personnel provided organisational support and security at various polling booths. On 9 April 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the ECI to increase VVPAT slips vote count to five randomly selected EVMs per assembly constituency, which meant that the ECI had to count VVPAT slips of 20,625 EVMs before it could certify the final election results.

Voting

In the first phase, 69.58 per cent of the 142 million eligible voters cast their vote to elect their representatives for 91 Lok Sabha seats. The voter turnout was 68.77 per cent in the same constituencies in the 2014 general elections. In the second phase, 156 million voters were eligible to vote for 95 Lok Sabha seats and the turnout was 69.45 per cent, compared to 69.62 per cent in 2014. For the third phase, 189 million voters were eligible to elect 116 Lok Sabha representatives. According to ECI, the turnout for this phase was 68.40 per cent, compared to 67.15 per cent in 2014. In the fourth of seven phases, 65.50 per cent of the 128 million eligible voters cast their vote to elect 72 representatives to the Indian parliament while the turnout for the same seats in the 2014 election was 63.05 per cent. The fifth phase was open to 87.5 million eligible voters, who could cast their vote in over 96,000 polling booths. In the sixth phase, 64.40 per cent of the 101 million eligible voters cast their vote in about 113,000 polling stations.
The final turnout stood at 67.11 per cent, the highest ever turnout recorded in any of the general elections till date. The percentage is 1.16 per cent higher than the 2014 elections whose turnout stood at 65.95 per cent. Over 600 million voters polled their votes in 2019 Indian General elections.

Turnout

State/UT-wise voter turnout details

Surveys and polls

Results

Outgoing Cabinet Minister to loose in the election

Reactions

National

Indian National Congress party leaders such as Rahul Gandhi and others conceded defeat and congratulated Modi and his party. Other opposition parties and political leaders such as Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee and Omar Abdullah, congratulated PM Modi and BJP for their victory.
On 20 November 2019 the Association for Democratic Reforms filed a petition with the Supreme Court of India over alleged ballot-counting discrepancies in the Lok Sabha voting and seeking a probe by the ECI.

International

The leaders of Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Botswana, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burundi, Canada, China, Comoros, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lesotho, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Netherlands, Nicaragua, North Korea, Nigeria, New Zealand, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Portugal, Qatar, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Seychelles, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Zambia, and Zimbabwe congratulated Narendra Modi and the BJP on their victory.

Government formation

Swearing-in ceremony

Impact

The benchmark BSE Sensex and Nifty50 indices hit intraday record highs and the Indian rupee strengthened after the exit polls and on the day the election results were announced.

Timeline