97 crore voters, 1.8 crore election workers: CEC highlights scale of India's polls

Lucknow: Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar stated on Monday that India, with approximately 97 crore voters, represents "the biggest family in the world."

"In India, there are approximately 97 crore voters. This figure is not just a statistic; it's significant. Do you know what 97 crore equals in terms of voter population of various countries? If you add the voters of the US, Canada, South America, entire Europe, entire Africa, entire South-East Asia, even then 8 crore is left. You are a part of such a large democracy. This is the biggest family in the world," Kumar said.

Kumar made the remarks while participating in the regional conference of ELC 2.0 and ECINET at the Indira Gandhi Pratishthan in Lucknow, the office of the UP chief electoral officer said in a statement.


Kumar elaborated on the scale of the operations carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI) during Lok Sabha elections.

"The Government of India, the world's largest government, employs 65 lakh people. In contrast, Walmart, the largest private company, employs 20 lakh. During Lok Sabha elections, the ECI becomes the largest organisation on Earth, with 1.8 crore people working alongside it," he emphasised, highlighting the enormity of the process.

He pointed out that there is no better example of transparency than this.

Posing a question to his audience, he asked how communication takes place with these 1.8 crore people. The CEC explained that they are all connected through ECINET, which links state chief electoral officers (CEOs), district election officers (DEOs), sub-divisional magistrates (SDMs), booth-level officers (BLOs), presiding officers, and counting officers.

Kumar also mentioned that there are 2.5 crore downloads of Twitter (now known as X) in India and asserted that "the truth is on ECINET."

He added that ECINET was launched 4-5 months ago and is expected to become the largest app in India by the end of this year, since it contains comprehensive information from all elections since 1951, including voter turnout at polling booths, votes received by candidates, and their affidavits.