Vedant Patel
On Thursday, Vedant Patel, the Principal Deputy Spokesperson for the US State Department, expressed the US’s keenness to further enhance and solidify its collaboration with partners in India.
When questioned about the Lok Sabha elections in India and whether the US has dispatched any observers, Patel reiterated the US’s commitment to fostering strong ties with India and said, “I am not aware of the United States sending any observers. We generally don’t in the case of advanced democracies like India.”
“We, of course, are eager to continue to deepen and strengthen our cooperation with our partners in India, and we are just going to let the election play out. I don’t have any assessment or comment to offer on that,” he aat a press briefing.
With the world’s largest democratic exercise currently underway in India, voters will begin casting their votes on Friday to elect 543 members of Parliament. This seven-phased election is unprecedented in scale and logistics, covering every corner of the vast and diverse country.
In the first phase on April 19, a total of 16.63 crore voters will participate, deciding the fate of 1,625 candidates. The Election Commission of India has set up 1.87 lakh polling stations and deployed 18 lakh personnel across the 102 constituencies voting on Friday.
This initial phase, with the highest number of parliamentary constituencies among all seven phases, will see polling in 21 States and Union Territories. According to ECI data, an estimated 8.4 crore male voters, 8.23 crore female voters, and 11,371 third-gender electors are eligible to vote.
This year’s Lok Sabha election, spanning from April 19 to June 1, will be the second-longest polling exercise in the country’s electoral history, after the first general election held over five months between September 1951 and February 1952.
Polling will also take place on April 26, May 7, May 13, May 20, May 25, and June 1 to elect the 18th Lok Sabha, with votes to be counted on June 4. Notably, the last general elections in 2019 were also held in seven phases.
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