Election System of India

India has an asymmetric federal government, with elected officials at the federal, state and local levels.

At the national level, the head of government, Prime Minister, is elected by members of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the parliament of India. The elections are conducted by the Election Commission of India. All members of the Lok Sabha, except two who can be nominated by the President of India, are directly elected through general elections which take place every five years, in normal circumstances, by universal adult suffrage and a first-past-the-post system.

Members of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian parliament, are elected by elected members of the legislative assemblies of the states and the Electoral College for the Union Territories of India.

2015 general elections involved an electorate of 863,500,000 people {including all peoples above 18 years} (larger than both EU and US elections combined). Declared expenditure has trebled since 1989 to almost $300 million, using more than one million electronic voting machines. The size of the huge electorate mandates that elections be conducted in a number of phases (there were nine phases in the 2014 general election). It involves a number of step-by-step processes from announcement of election dates to the announcement of results paving the way for the formation of the new government.

For more details, click here: http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/the_function.aspx