A MIP model for scheduling India’s General elections and police movement

Conducting the General Elections for the 543 members of the Parliament of India across the 833 thousand polling stations spread over the 35 States is a mammoth exercise. Deployment of the Central Police Forces is essential to complement the role of the State police during the elections. However paucity of Central Police Forces necessitates the conduct of elections over stages. This paper proposes and demonstrates a MIP model to (a) schedule the elections with a minimum number of stages (b) sourcing the appropriate number of security personnel from the most convenient Central Police Forces bases (c)scheduling movement of security personnel between stages with the objective of minimizing men-miles.