Indian elections cover an electorate larger than 700 million people - the largest democratic country in the world. On April 16th, 2009 the first phase of the voting for the Indian general elections will begin and conclude on May 13th, 2009. The country has been divided into 543 Parliamentary Constituencies, each of which returns one MP to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Parliament. This is the 15th general elections in India since it became independent in 1947. In the 2004 election to Lok Sabha there were 1351 candidates from 6 National parties, 801 candidates from 36 State parties, 898 candidates from officially recognized parties and 2385 Independent candidates.
Jaago Re! One Billion Votes is a non-partisan national campaign launched by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (a non-profit organization) and Tata Tea, to awaken and enable the citizens of India, especially the youth, to register for voting.
The National Election Watch (NEW) is a nationwide campaign comprising of more than 1200 NGO and other citizen led organizations working on electoral reforms, improving democracy and governance in India.
There is also a No Criminals campaign started so that no political party will give tickets to people with criminal antecedents in the 2009 general elections.
Here a few links to track and follow this exciting phase over the next couple of months:
Rediff
Google
Yahoo
Election Commission of India
IBNLive
Stop complaining about bad roads, corrupt politicians and unfair reservations. Go vote for a new tomorrow. Make democracy work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment