Page 110 - Leap of Faith inside pages with cover (1)

Leap of Faith Journey of Indian Elections

was two-phased in six states and three-phased in five.
The elections to the legislative assemblies of Arunachal
Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and
Sikkim were also held alongside the Lok Sabha
elections.

The Thirteenth General Elections were the last, held
predominantly with paper ballot. Only 45 Parliamentary
Constituencies spread over 17 states/UTs and covering
about 60 million (six crore) electorate voted by the
EVMs. In a few cases, EVMs ballot boxes were swapped,
according to the requirement in various states. For
instance, since polling in all seven Parliamentary
Constituencies of Delhi were held through EVMs, the

On May 3, itself the presence of intruders was noticed at
Yaldor Sector (district Leh) in Ladakh in the erstwhile
Jammu and Kashmir. The situation soon escalated and
spiraled into the “Kargil War” requiring heavy mobilisation
of Indian Armed Forces. The hostilities covered the whole
of May and June and best part of July.

The work of election planning, however, did not suffer for
a day. Since it was an emergent national security the full
Commission chose to meet the Prime Minister, who was
assisted by Home Minister, External Affairs Minister, and
the National Security Advisor on July 2. A separate
meeting with Chief Secretary, Home Secretary, DG (J&K
Police) and Chief Electoral Officer, J&K was held on July 5,
1999. Fortunately, the “Kargil War” came to an end on
July 26, 1999 with all intruders being dislodged from the
Indian soil.
The election schedule was announced on July 11, 1999. It
was staggered into five phases with actual poll dates
being September 4, 11, 17, 24 and October 1. While
elections were single phased for most states and UTs it

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