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Roads, boats and elephants
How India mobilised a million polling stations
PUBLISHED MAY 22, 2019
The final day of voting in India’s mammoth general election was on Sunday. Over 900 million people were eligible to cast their ballots in the staggered seven-phase polling.
The world’s biggest election involved around 1 million polling stations spread across the country, from remote corners of the Himalayas to crocodile-infested mangrove swamps of the Andaman Islands. Each polling station served about 900 voters on average but some catered for over 3,000 people.
Each voting location used electronic voting machines (EVMs) which were first introduced in 1982. Instead of issuing a ballot paper, electors cast their votes by pressing a button next to a candidate’s name and party symbol.
Voting compartment
Presiding officers
The control unit and status display unit are connected to equipment in the voting compartment and can open the ballot.
Printed confirmation
Connection to the control unit
Control unit
VVPAT
machine
Ballot unit
Status display
unit
The Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) system is attached to the EVM to confirm the vote. It prints a small slip of paper carrying the symbol and name of the candidate voted for. This is visible to the voter for a short period, and can be later used by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to verify the votes.
An election official marks the finger of a voter inside a polling booth in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, in this file picture taken February 2012. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar
After voting, people receive a mark of purple ink on their index finger as an indication that they have cast their ballot.
Polling stations
ECI guidelines say no voter should be more than 2 km away from a polling station. This means that in densely populated swathes of the country, such as the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, the distribution of polling stations tends to follow a similar pattern to population density.
Clusters of stations in major cities and towns are evident, along with populated road networks. Rivers and sparsely populated, rugged terrain or jungle show as empty space.
Home to 200 million people, the state is India’s most populous. This year it needed 160,000 polling stations, shown on the map below.
Polling stations
Forest
NEPAL
Uttarakhand
N
25 km
Ghaghara River
Ganges River
Uttar Pradesh
Delhi
Lucknow
Kanpur
Rajasthan
INDIA
Sparsely populated,
rugged terrain
INDIA
For such a mammoth exercise, nearly 11 million government officials and security forces were deployed, travelling by foot, road, special train, helicopter, boat and sometimes elephant.
Many locations are often in isolated areas with few facilities. More than 80,000 stations surveyed by the ECI lacked mobile connectivity, and nearly 20,000 were located in forest or semi-forest areas, according to data released last year.
In the forests
The small eastern state of Mizoram has over 86% of its geographical area under forest cover, the second-highest in India after the far-flung Lakshadweep islands.
Mizoram is also a mountainous state of steep, rocky cliffs and deep valleys, making for some almost inaccessible polling stations. The state shares an international border of about 722 km with Bangladesh and Myanmar, and the security agencies closed border gates during the elections. The ECI set up separate polling booths for about 15,000 state voters staying in refugee camps in the neighbouring state of Tripura since 1997 after ethnic clashes.
The distribution of polling stations in Mizoram is sparser and tends to follow the ridges of the hills that run in a north-south direction through the state.
Assam
Manipur
Many ridges with steep slopes
and narrow valleys covered
with thick forest
Forest cover
Mizoram
INDIA
Aizawal
MYANMAR
Remote
border villages
Lunglei
CHIN
HILLS
BANGLADESH
INDIA
Mizoram
10 km
In the far northeast of the country is Arunachal Pradesh, another state covered in thick forest. According to the latest India State of Forest Report, it has the largest area of very dense forest (VDF) in the country. This tree cover gives way to snow-capped mountain peaks along the northern border with China.
This challenging terrain means some of the most remote and hard-to-reach polling stations in the country were set up in the state. One temporary booth was set up for a single female voter. The Malogam Temporary Structure was constructed by a team of six election workers who travelled 30-40 km for two days to put up the booth.
Out of the 2,202 polling stations in the state, seven had less than 10 voters, 281 between 11 to 100.
Arunachal Pradesh
Assam
INDIA
N
Siang Valley
Stretch of remote
stations
10 km
CHINA
Arunachal Pradesh
Tawang
BHUTAN
Daporijo
INDIA
Temporary booth
Set up for one voter
Booth set up for
three voters
Assam
Brahmaputra River
Nimatighat
Shown in image below
MYANMAR
Immediately south of Arunachal Pradesh is Assam. The state has 13 times more polling stations than Arunachal Pradesh but is flatter and has less forest cover. However, the state has its own challenges due to a number of small islands and sandbars scattered around the Brahmaputra River that runs through the state, which are home to many voters.
Polling officers carry electronic voting machines towards their vehicles after arriving on a ferryboat in Nimatighat, Jorhat district, in the northeastern Indian state of Assam, April 9, 2019. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi
Election officials travelling to cut-off locations need to carry all of the necessary equipment and paperwork with them across tough terrain and any obstacles. Voting machines are packed in special carry cases after disconnecting power supply from connected batteries once voting is completed. They are sealed with the official stamp of the ECI and candidates’ agents. Journeys carrying these machines can sometimes take days.
Porters carry Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines and Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) through Buxa tiger reserve forest to a remote polling station, in Alipurduar district in the eastern state of West Bengal, India, April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri
High in the Himalayas
In the north of the country is Himachal Pradesh, a small state with a population of 70 million, predominantly a mountainous region in the Himalayas neighbouring Tibet.
Voters pose for a group photograph at Tashigang, the world’s highest polling station. May 19, 2019. Photo: ANI
With a backdrop of the snow-capped Himalayas stretched out across a vibrant blue sky, the village of Tashigang in the Spiti Valley was the highest polling station in the world when voting took place, according to the ECI. 49 voters were registered to vote at the station which sits 15,256 feet above sea level. The election team used helicopters to reach the remote area.
Another polling station in the remote village of Ka, 9,700 feet above sea level, was set up for just 16 voters, 12 female and four male, the smallest number for this state in this election.
Himachal Pradesh
INDIA
CHINA
Tashigang
India’s highest
polling station
Ka
Only 16 voters
HIMALAYAS
Spiti Valley
INDIA
Himachal Pradesh
Sutlej Valley
Kullu Valley
Uttarakhand
Dhauladhar range
Shimla
Pong Dam
Chandigarh
Haryana
N
Punjab
10 km
Small, sometimes dilapidated shelters scattered across this region become tremendously important for the one day every five years when they are used by citizens in these distant places to have their say in their country’s election.
Polling stations in Himachal Pradesh. Photos: Election Department, Himachal Pradesh.
India’s Election Commission has made elaborate arrangements to conduct a free and fair election and ensure that no voter is left behind. But analysts said it will have to take steps to regain its reputation of an impartial referee after it faced internal rifts and criticism from opposition parties for what they said was insufficient action taken against the ruling party for violating rules.
Source: The Election Commission of India; Election departments of Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, and Mizoram; Indian Space Research Organisation; GLAD (Global Land Analysis & Discovery) lab, University of Maryland; Forest Survey of India. Reuters reporting
By Simon Scarr, Manas Sharma and Marco Hernandez
Additional reporting and editing by Manoj Kumar, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Karishma Singh
Additional reporting and editing by Manoj Kumar, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Karishma Singh
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