Less-than-a-minute read. Written by a grade 6 student

It sounds a bit confusing, all this election stuff. I didn’t really know how elections work in India. I mean I knew we were a democracy and all that, but so is America, but they have a president and we have a Prime Minister! And how does it all happen.

In India we have a parliament – like people who makes all the laws etc and work to run the country. There are two parts of the parliament – the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

The Lok Sabha has 545 seats. Basically that means that it there are 543 MPs (Members of Parliament) who are elected by the people (2 are nominated by the President – that’s why there are 545).

The way is works is pretty simple: Each state has a number of seats. For example Uttar Pradesh has 80 seats. This means it will send 80 MPs to the Parliament. Parties try to win as many states as they can, so that they have majority seats in the main parliament (that is the Lok Sabha).

Basically once a party wins a state (lots of seats in that state) they win the seats of that state, and when the national election are held then that party will have the seats of the state they own, and that helps them win the national elections.

At the end whichever party has the majority seats from the 545 in the Lok Sabha, that party wins the national election.

What happens if no party gets a majority? Then they have to form alliances (like join each other) to form a government.