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Indians will cast their votes at one million polling stations where an army of 10 million election officials will manage the polling as it unfolds over several weeks, culminating on May 19 in the vote-rich states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and West Bengal.

And if the figure of 900 million voters is difficult to comprehend, try to fathom the fact 464 political parties participated in India’s last general election back in 2014. True, most of these parties are regional, based in one or more of India’s 29 states, but that does not make the task of governing India any easier.

To illustrate the complex juggling of election alliances, just in the state of Punjab one left-wing electoral coalition called the Punjab Democratic Alliance is comprised of nine parties contesting under one flag for seven seats.

Of course, there are a handful of national parties — including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the opposition Congress Party led by Rahul Gandhi and the two Communist parties, who have lost much of their lustre after the late-1980s.

While elections in next door Pakistan are often rigged and ballot boxes stolen or stuffed with manufactured votes, India stands out as a sharp contrast to the thuggery next door.

India has eliminated the concept of the paper ballot and the ballot box. Every Indian voter will be using an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) to cast their vote, making voter fraud impossible and empowering even the illiterate peasant to choose his or her candidate by simply pushing a button.