New Delhi: The world is under curiosity as the nine phase marathon polling for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in India came to an end.
The country together with the world now awaits the judgement of the natives which can be known on the coming Friday, the 16th of May.
After the last phase, the election commission said that, in the world’s biggest democratic exercise of 2014, about 66.38% of the 827-million-strong Indian electorate exercised their franchise.
The polling percentage has surpassed the 1984 turnout of 64% , during which Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India after the assassination of Indira Gandhi.
The 2014 polls have also broken the record in terms of voters’ numbers created about five years ago when the Congress-led UPA returned to power for a second straight time.
Altogether 551 million voters (this is more than the combined population of the US, Germany, Canada and the UK) have casted their ballots in this year’s parliament elections in India.
The Director General of election commission Akshay Rout told reporters after the end of the nine-phase polling that this figure has also shattered the previous record of 417 million for any general election set five years ago.

Video on election result forecast in India