We are in the eve of selecting the prime minister of the biggest democracy in the world. The first election of democratic India was conducted for the span of 4 months starting from October 25 1951 to February 21 1952 for 489 seats. It was conducted by means of ballot box with different colored papers for different candidates and their respective symbols encrypted on the papers.

The Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) was first introduced for the by-election, held in the North Paravur constituency of Kerala, in 1982. The Indian Constitution amendment act of 1988 brought changes to the Article 326, thereby lowering the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. If a voter is not interested to vote for any of the candidates, a new choice was introduced named ‘None of the Above-NOTA’, which came into effect in 2013. 

The Lok Sabha elections of 2024 is going to be conducted between 19thApril 2024 to 1st June 2024 in seven phases and the votes collected will be counted on 4th June 2024. Along with the Lok Sabha elections, the state elections of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim and the by-election of 26 constituencies are going to be held. The election is conducted by the autonomous body- Election commission of India, to ensure free and fair elections. 

At present, 96.8 Crore citizens are eligible for voting in which 1.8 crore are first time voters. 19.47 crore voters are between the age of 20 to 29. There are 10.5 Lakh polling places in the country and the poll workers are 1.5 crore in number. 55 Lakh electronic voting machines are going to be used for the elections. 

The elections are going to be held for 543 seats around the country, in which Uttar Pradesh has the most number of parliament seats- 80, followed by Maharashtra with 48 seats and West Bengal with 42 seats. 

It's the right time to show the power of our vote. Let’s join our hands on the biggest democratic festival and cast our vote to a bright future.