India created a “world record” with 642 million voters, including 31.2 crore women, exercising their franchise in the just-concluded Lok Sabha polls, the world’s largest electoral exercise, Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar said today.
Addressing the media in New Delhi a day after the final lap of polling, he said over 68,000 monitoring teams and 1.5 crore polling and security personnel were involved in the electoral process, reports our New Delhi correspondent.
“We have created a world record. 642 million proud Indian voted in this year’s election, including 312 million women voters. This is a historic moment for all of us. … This is 1.5 times of the voters of all G7 countries — US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada all put together,” Kumar said adding “this has been the incredible power of the voters of India.
On social media memes calling election commissioners “Laapataa Gentlemen” a name after Bollywood movie “Laapata Ladies”, Kumar quipped: “We were always here, never went missing. “Now memes can say the ‘Laapata Gentlemen’ are back.”
Kumar said this was one of the general elections “where we have not seen violence”.
He said the EC had cracked down heavily on inducements in any form in the elections.
The CEC said a record seizure of almost Rs 10,000 crores was done which was nearly three times the value seized in the previous national elections in 2019.
