As counting begins, The 545 will maintain a live blog to tell you the news as and when it breaks. Please keep refreshing the page. 3.23pm – The BJP has swept the polls and has decimated the incumbent UPA government. India will have a new leader in the coming days. 2.13pm – BJP office, Delhi. Read more
There has been talk of a “Modi Wave”, a political tsunami that would ride the BJP to a majority — or a near majority — in Parliament. But how big does that wave need to be, for the BJP to win 200 or even 270 seats by itself? Here are 10 seats — out of the Read more
“Your village is so small, I normally would not have visited this place,” said Varun Gandhi. The BJP’s Lok Sabha candidate from Sultanpur and sitting MP from Pilibhit, UP, was speaking to a gathering of about 100 people while campaigning in a village in Sultanpur. “I am going to win whether or not you vote Read more
This post originally appeared on the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. As the elections draw to a close, one group in the United States is particularly invested in the outcome of the polling: the Indian diaspora. Members of this community have family in India, and feel tied to the country through heritage, culture, and religion. Indian Read more
F ive weeks after they began, the 2014 Indian elections come to a close today, with the final 41 constituencies going to the polls in the ninth phase. Sixty-six million voters from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal will vote among 606 candidates. But all the attention will be on Narendra Modi as he battles Read more
This election season, the country has been promised plenty by each of the major political parties. Including, of course, a return to the soaring economic growth India knew a decade ago. If the GDP is, in fact, such a concern, here’s something to keep in mind: in 2009, the World Bank pointed out, India was Read more
M uch has been said, written and bellowed about the Congress’ gloomy prospects in what are now Telangana and Seemandhra (for a refresher on how the two states came to be, check out The 545’s story from February). Telangana voted last week and Seemandhra is among the 64 Lok Sabha constituencies that are polling today. Read more
How can you cover an election in India without meeting at least one actor on the campaign trail? So much has been said and written about celebrities in Parliament — and whether or not they contribute to the quality of governance — that I felt it was important to follow at least one to try Read more
We may call them politicians, but the Internet calls them cannon-fodder. Image: Indian Memes Much has been made of how big a role social media has played in the 2014 Parliamentary elections. However, as our politicians discovered with bad grace and much chagrin – with the Internet’s great potential for propaganda-spamming, comes the inevitable flipside Read more
Political satire is a serious thing, and as political scientist Dr. Paul Parker once remarked, “The political cartoonist is not necessarily bound by the same ethical standards as journalists.” In the run-up to the elections, The 545 will bring to you a weekly comic from Nishant Jain, giving us his irreverent take on our politicians Read more
