Scheduling India’s General Elections

Abstract

Conducting the General Elections for the 543 members of the Parliament of India across the 835 thousand polling stations spread over the 35 States is a mammoth exercise. Deployment of the Central Police Forces is essential to complement the role of the State police during the elections. However paucity of Central Police Forces necessitates the conduct of elections over phases. This paper proposes and demonstrates a 2-stage procedure using integer programming and transportation models to (a) schedule the elections with a minimum number of phases (b) sequencing the phases, such that the movement of Central Police Forces (measured in men-miles) is minimized and (c) sourcing the appropriate number of personnel from the most convenient Central Police Forces bases.