General Elections 2024, Oscars, India tops world’s arms import, and more | The week in 5 charts

Here are five charts that will help you understand some of the key stories from last week

India will go to the polls from April 19 to June 1, in a marathon seven-phase exercise to elect the 543 members of the 18th Lok Sabha, the Election Commission announced on Saturday. Assembly elections will be held simultaneously in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh.

The dates of polling for the Lok Sabha are April 19, April 26, May 7, May 13, May 20, May 25, and June 1. In Bihar, West Bengal, and Uttar Pradesh, voting will take place in all seven phases. The counting of votes will take place on June 4.

Voters in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim will cast their ballots for their Assembly elections on April 19, while Andhra Pradesh will elect its Assembly on May 13. Odisha’s Assembly poll will be held in four phases, with voting on May 13, May 20, May 25, and June 1. The by-elections are also being held in the States of Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Tripura.

Here’s the constituency-wise schedule:

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has put up the full list of donors who purchased electoral bonds and the political parties that encashed them. The State Bank of India (SBI) had disclosed this information to the ECI on March 12. The Supreme Court had directed the ECI to host this information on its website by March 15.  

On analysing the data, it is found that among parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party encashed electoral bonds worth ₹6,060.5 crore — the highest among all parties — within this period. In fact, the BJP’s share of the total bonds encashed by parties was over 47.5%. The All India Trinamool Congress received ₹1,609.50 crore (12.6%) via this route, followed by the Congress, which received ₹1,421.9 crore (11.1%), the second and third biggest parties in terms of encashment during the period. The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (9.5%), Biju Janata Dal (6.1%), and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (5%) were the other parties which encashed more than ₹500 crore worth of electoral bonds during this period. The graphic below shows 15 parties that received the highest amount of donations through electoral bonds.

Among the donors, Future Gaming and Hotel Services PR, whose managing director is the well known lottery magnate Santiago Martin, was the single largest donor to political parties between April 12, 2019 and January 24, 2024 - donating ₹1,368 crore rupees through electoral bonds.