Elections in India: photo by Gaurav Satle at Kala Ghoda 2012.

India has a quasi federal government, with elected officials at the federal (national), state and local levels. On a national level, the head of government, the Prime Minister, is elected in-directly by the people[citation needed], through a general election where the leader of the majority winning party is selected to be the Prime Minister. All members of the federal legislature, the Parliament, are directly elected. Elections in India take place every five years by universal adult suffrage.
In 2009, the elections involved an electorate of 714 million (larger than both EU and US elections combined). Declared expenditure has trebled since 1989 to almost $300 million, using more than one million electronic voting machines.
The size of the huge electorate mandates that elections be conducted in a number of phases (there were four phases in 2004 General Elections and five phases in 2009). It involves a number of step-by-step processes from announcement of election dates by the Election Commission of India, which brings into force the ‘model code of conduct’ for the political parties, to the announcement of results and submission of the list of successful candidates to the executive head of the state or the centre. The submission of results marks the end of the election process, thereby paving way for the formation of the new government.